No, he’s singing the hymn of Reaganist Christianity, which figures each man -- or each family -- an island, and the state, with its handouts of welfare or food stamps, an intruder in the moral

Right. That is the PR this moral reprobate would like people to believe. But a cursory look at all the rich filth recently bailed out from the investment and other banks presents a different picture. Of moral troglydytes and parasites who preyed on the vulnerable to make their billions. Degenerate capitalist scum who merit no quarter yet are extolled, while poor union workers are vilified merely for wanting to preserve some minimal quality of life.

This country has it all ass-backwards, but it figures. The only god they worship, despite all the religious pontifications, is the almighty buck.

Fool-idge snarked: It must be horribly emasculating for little Mr. Reich to wander around campus surrounded by actual scholars and doctorate students

That's about the fifth time you've referred to the "little" Mr. Reich or some synonymn in your daft and clueless rants. Do you have a size complex, Calvin? Does Reich's small size discomfit you? Do you have the delusion that because he is below the median Amerikkan stature his brains must match and be similarly below the median? If so, you are an asswipe idiot.

But then any bozo that actually uses the monicker "Calvin Coolidge" on a Salon blog would have to fall in that category.

Tell me, dickshit, just what are your esteemed qualifications that justify your denigration of Robert Reich? Where did you go to school? How far did you go? Did you study the Gaussian Copula formula? Show us how it works, and the connection to credit default swaps.

Show us how structured investment vehicles (SIVs) are put together from them.

Do that, or shut the fuck up!

Calvin Kewlidge wrote:Wow, five times worse. How far up your ass did you have to explore in order to find that little nugget?

Krugman, a Nobel winning economist cited it as the maximal worst case we might face, if all those credit default swaps ($55 trillion) are not dealt with and the credit markets unfrozen.

Now, blow it out your ass you little twerp, and go back to Coolidgeville, or American Enterprise Institute, or wherever clowns like you hang out.

Do you even know what a credit defaul swap is? Do you know the basis the (Maul Stret) quants used for it, the Gaussian Copula formula - which paired vastly unrelated entities into correlated financial bundles? Nope, didn't think so.

So go fuck yourself.

Only an economic idiot would not see that this first package is simply too paltry. Economists across the spectrum (except for hard right whackjobs operating out of the American Heritage Foundation) agree at least two trillion is needed, probably three.

Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman(who some morons here still put down as being just a glorified journalist) has noted at least $3 trillion will likely be needed.

There is no use whining and caterwauling about it, if it means avoiding a disaster five times worse than the Great Depression then we HAVE to do it.

Then anti-Keynesians need to go soak their heads, or better....blow themsleves. May take their minds off impeding the needed efforts and thwarting Obama.

nevity wrote: Let the monies deducted from citizens income for Social Security be for citizens Social Security

Bingo! You nailed it. The problem is not that Social security doesn't work, but that it works too well. It works so well that other segments of the government feel they can pillage it at will, and damned the citizens for whom it was intended.

The biggest error LBJ ever made was allowing it to mix with general revenues, but then there was a reason behind this madness: to artificially diminish the size of the deficit (just as the bushies did with the iraq fiasco, by keeping all Iraq funds as "emergency" yearly entries, not part of the budget per se)

As for those who say there is nothing to the Trust fund or any real bonds there, I can tell you that if those bonds are "no good" and can't be collected, we have a helluva lot more to worry about than Social security going "broke"!

The reactionary WSJ is merely doing what it does best: talking shit. The real cause of the crash (which will also continue for at least two years, until the DOW goes below 5,000) is ASSET DEFLATION owing to an overleveraged market.

Until all the credit default swaps are unwound (all $55 TRILLION of them, see The $55 Trillion Question' in FORTUNE, October, 2008) the underpinning of the market will not be secure, and share values will continue nose diving)

I have already suggested to all my friends that they get the hell out of the market and stay out for the forseable future. Most people in the know project a down or flat market for at least a decade. No mre amping up toward "DOW 10,000" or whatever other baloney the market hacks peddle.

And forget all about "capitulation" happening anytime soon, again not until all the toxic assets (credit default swaps) are wiped off the banks' books.

In the long deleverage process, with all asset bubbles punctured, no fund or stock will be able to jack up yield by using tricks such as stacking investments with derivatives, IOs or other crap. People simply won't buy them. In the future investment world the snake-bitten will reach only for what is understandable and transparent.

In a way this is a good thing since the stock market was always designed more as a financial casino for the wealthy, not for ordinary Jacks and Janes to park their precious retirement money.

Who is to blame for this debacle? WALL STREET! For taking on-hiring the quants who devised the instruments at the bottom of the credit default swaps. For more on this, and the quantitative demon formula that is responsible - get the latest issue of WIRED, and read the cover story!