...the theme is a bit tired, but more importantly, I am really creeped out by the idea of a hand with a face on it.

That's about as a concise explanation of the entire sub-prime loan debacle as I've seen, but, yeah, the hand is reeeeaaallllly creepy.

I don't know if Ronald Reagan would have been comfortable with a left hand manipulating the market - who knows, it might not be the free market after all, but instead more like the patchouli-soaked vendor of stir fry at a Grateful Dead concert. "Get your stir fry - my veggies are straight from a collective farm in a land with a government far too big to drown in a bathtub!"

Had me laughing out loud in the first frame. Great job of denaturalizing what the Repubs would have us take for granted. Sky is blue, grass is green, "we're" kicking ass in Iraq, and the free market is the hand of god. Funny how all Tomorrow really does is let the right speak for itself, with just the right twist of framing to show it for what it is. Very nice.

Among the tribes of Wall Street, this "wisdom of the market" stuff is believed so strongly because then you can do anything you want, and it ends up being good not only for them, but for us all.

The fact that it's sheer ideological tripe, worthy of the old Soviet Union, is less noticed.

I think Naomi Klein has it nailed perfectly in her new book, "Shock Capitalism." It says--

Oh, pick up a copy.

To cut the duct tape from all those people who were held hostage and forced into taking out massive mortgages. Especially all those middle class college educated people who can't be expected to read a loan app much less worry about paying it off.

I blame The Man. Free housing for everyone!!

Okay, I realize it's pathetic and self-abasing to not only BE a rabid fanboy of a friggin' comic strip, but to admit to it (albeit under a pseudonym). But Mr "Tomorrow" really is, I think, a genius, in the literal meaning of the term. He's got a gift -- one that I think borders on the unique -- for taking very complex, intricate, layered, and nuanced realities, and summarizing them in ways that are simplified, but never oversimplified; accurate, on point, elucidating, and of course, hilarious (if only by way of laughing to keep from crying, of course).

Can't say I give him full credit for the humor, though - for some of that, we owe the lunatics of the various cliques and claques depicted so brilliantly. The Christianists, the Faux News fen, the corporatists, and all the other reichwing authoritarians (not to mention our pusillanimous Democratic "leaders" and all the "sensible liberals") have taken their absurdities so far beyond where any satire of even just a few years ago could have predicted...

And, as one of the older strips pointed out, isn't it pathetic when so many of the facts that show up in these cartoons would actually be complete news to most Americans?

First, I'm a huge fan and regular reader of "This Modern World". Second, I am a screamingly liberal Democrat. Having established same, this cartoon makes me quite uncomfortable, and not just because the hand is indeed creepy. The practice of sub-prime mortgage lending and its resultant fallout could not have happened without eager queues of customers willing to sign on the dotted lines. I'm a pink collar worker who just bought my first house at age 54. I had to move from Southern California to Nevada to find an affordable, sensible property, and even then would not have been able to finance this home without a generous assist on the down payment from my elderly mother. But I bypassed many opportunities to buy a house because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make the payments. Of course it grieves me to think of families losing their homes and investments - but the sad reality is, the homes were never theirs in the first place. Caveat Emptor!

we live in a country where buying a house is part of the dream. if you haven't done so by the time you're in your 30s there is enormous peer and societal pressure. what's wrong with you, you HAVE to buy a house. "EQUITY!!! YOU'RE WASTING MONEY ON RENT!" not to mention people with kids who need more room. So yes, I can see how people got into the trouble they are in now with mortgages. Me, I'm still a renter because I did read the fine print. It's a shame tho that people who work full-time jobs still can't afford to buy even a modest house.

What if some robber barons, who happened to control banking, came up with a plan for a huge real estate heist. What if they hatched a scheme to practically give mortgage money away with no-doc, no-proof, stated-income loans to anyone who asked for one, with adjustable interest rates that started out real low but then reset like a mouse trap to levels the originally euphoric borrowers, who hadn't read the terms closely enough to really understand them, would not be able to pay. What would happen?

Many many of those no-longer-euphoric buyers would default on their loans and their properties would revert to the lenders, who could then sell them at market value. Even if that value had dropped some in the shakeout, it would still all be gravy since the lenders had already sold the mortgages to investors.

Who would be taking the bath?

What if?

you don't automatically embrace all those people who can't afford their own car loans. After all, Repo Men have been around a long time. Is THAT a deep dark plot too? I say there should be no more private ownership of anything. Free everything for everyone!!!

The point of this cartoon would seem to be to highlight the massive hypocrisy of happy-go-lucky free marketeers who stand to get bailed out by the government after their scam collapsed far more than to bemoan the fact that low-income suckers made bad decisions to take out loans from cynical lenders who knew they could game the system and then get bailed out by taxpayer dollars.

By your logic the next poor kid who gets his legs blown off by an IED because he was foolish enough to enlist for the secure pay and benefits offered by the US military is more to blame for his injury AND paltry post-combat benefits than the cynical draft-dodging money-men who sent said kid to Iraq....