IMHO the real move toward irresponsibility with debt occurred awhile back. It happened the day the first bank decided to throw mathematical calculations out the window in favor of massive spreadsheets with countless estimated variables predicting the "risks" and "rewards" of certain policies, which allowed them to create and operate by a completely artificial, imaginary, and changeable-at-a-whim reality. Of course the "profits" promised by that artificial reality meant everyone else soon followed suit.

These banks then began to believe their spreadsheets while, at the same time, pressuring those who produced them to be more creative in their assessment of the variables involved so that more profit could be wrung out of their customers.

Prior to all this, the average customer didn't have to worry too much about being responsible with credit because, as long as you told the truth about your financial situation on your credit application, the financial institutions would never take the risk of allowing you to be irresponsible. You could generally only get yourself into trouble if you lied on your application about how much you owed and to whom. Nobody EVER told credit customers that the rules had changed. Nobody said, "It's up to you to be careful and not get in over your head, because we, the banks, are going to let you do any fool thing you want."

When the banks left finance behind and entered the realm of gambling on "risks" and "rewards," they began to lie to themselves about the likelihood that their customers would be able to pay back the money the banks were letting them borrow. They actually began to expect their credit card customers to protect the banks' interests by not borrowing more than they could pay back.

When bankruptcies, caused by the banks' failure ot protect themselves from the very predictable (by human nature) behavior of their customers whereby the desire for the pretty toys whose advertising they were constantly barraged with on TV overcame their common sense, the banks claimed those customers shouldn't be allowed to declare bankruptcy because they all had enough money (mysteriously) hidden away somewhere and were just refusing to use it to pay their debts.

When a new bankruptcy law only slowed things down a bit, they started playing hardball with their struggling customers, piling on outrageous interest rates, late fees, over limit fees, etc. driving many who were trying their best to pay everything they could (and who would have paid every penny if given a bit of breathing room) toward bankruptcy only by virtue of the banks' own draconian policies.

In the end, the only thing that will turn this mess around (as so amply demonstrated by the irresponsible policies of the banks themselves) is re-regulation of interest rates and fees on consumer lending of all kinds. This and ONLY this will protect our banker friends from their own stupidity and will force them to stop using their plastic money system as a vehicle to redistribute massive amounts of wealth from the poor, the middle class, and the nations merchants' pockets into the already amply-and-undeservedly filled pockets of the heads of the banking system themselves.

That in his investigations of this situation, Cuomo will be able to come up with some VERIFIABLE evidence that these CDSs were exatly what they were: completely fraudulent, flim-flam style con artist games.

We all know that there was an underlying reason for these very unusual types of compensation guarantees to traders. Personally, I'm highly suspicious that these bonuses, especially the ones that guaranteed the same bonus as the previous year, no matter what this year's results might be, really amounted to hush money so that the few traders who were beginning to have reservations more than a year and a half ago about the multi-billion dollar fraud they were participating in and saw the inevitable collapse coming, wouldn't jump ship and go public.

We're all dying to know if the sky in your alternate reality (or the ceiling of your room in your mom's basement) has turned green today for St. Patrick's Day. Has it?

Which set up and strongly encouraged the switch to 401k's and allowed the cash reserves of traditional defined-benefit pension plans to be stripped down to nearly nothing and into whose pockets did all that money go?

It wasn't mine. It wasn't yours Jeb.

Wake up and smell the coffee. You've been had.

And say, "There's no place like home! There's no place like home! There's no place like home!" when we open our eyes, we'll find ourselves back in the days Double Helix seems to think we're still living in - the days of Ozzie and Harriet when well-regulated financial markets and capitalism really did function fairly well for everyone.

Sadly, capitalism as it has most recently been practiced here in the good old USA has been nothing like that. Rather, it's been a massive scheme for redistributing wealth from the poor and middle class directly into the pockets of those already having the most.

This economic class warfare worked by the rich against those with less has been a disaster for the average person of this nation.

Actually the benefits of a socialist system in which all a nation's citizens participate to ensure each others' well being have been quite apparent in many places for decades.

The totalitarian tendencies of some governments can be found in both absolutely socialist and totally free market capitalist nations.

All over the world there are both totalitarian states with both types of economies and very free states with both types of economies as well as every variation in between.

What really proves whether a state works or not is the well being of it's most unfortunate citizens (whatever the reason for that misfortune). When a nation doesn't care for its most unfortunate it is always headed for disaster from within sooner or later.