S7/128; History has provided abundant recent examples: the S&L crisis, Enron, Worldcom, the dot-com bubble, the current credit crisis, Madoff, etc.

–pretty damning alright. But thru those bubbles and scandals, unemployment stayed pretty low, GDP pretty high, productivity gaining and inflation tame, and no particular frets over the viability of the financial syatem. Relative to most other economies, this one chugged along behind those awful headlines, too healthy to flop over dead from a spell of flu or a migraine.

Matter of fact, re that list of scandals, an awful lot of the current players, even some then-shavetails like the current chairman of the CFTC (AKA “Obama’s head regulator”) have been more or less the drivers (from first one side and then the other, then back again, of the regulator/regulatee divide) of the since-mid-90s peculiar evolution of financial regulation that has repeatedly and regularly coughed up these bloody spumes.

It’s very easy to blame it all on too-much capitalism but as usual when the victim is blamed for the crime, the claim won’t hold up to even the most desultory challenge.

The trick is to define ‘capitalism’. If the definition includes robbery and exploitation, then there’s a communication problem with the definition referring to open markets and free choice and the Golden Rule. That broader definition obscures the critical right vs wrong stipulation, which renders it ideological rather than economic.

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jfs/131; thanks for asking –yes i got scalped but only on paper –i quit using stops long ago –the damned specialists would screw you on them back then –in the horse and buggy 80s.

I dunno what the fund managers are doing –i presume you mean the ones that took the hits in the funny place vacuum that the ‘away’ markets put underneath the exchange bid/asks –

There are so many victimized parties piling up –i’m still flabbergasted at the car bondholders that Uncle Sam Obama told to go frog themselves, cuz the law don’t matter no more –