Consider Goldman-Sachs -- up to now cheered for its "brilliant" effort to avoid the fallout from this -- selling this garbage while betting against it.  This is, I'm quite sure, fraud.

One thing is increasingly clear:  While a lot of the economic indicators look good, -- productivity growth was very high last quarter, for example, and exports have jumped quite a bit -- my view of this likely being a mild to moderate recession was likely too optimistic.  This is getting nastier by the minute.  And with the bubbles beginning to burst in some of the European countries, it's looking even worse.  House prices are starting to fall in Britain, down nearly 1% last month alone, and my understanding is that Ireland and Spain are suffering similar fates.  The question remains:  How much exposure to the toxic waste does Europe have?  And do we even want to know the answer to that question when replacing Europe with Asia?

A lot of people are going to lose a lot of fucking money in this.  And a lot of people who don't deserve to get hurt will.  Let the gamblers hang and swing in the wind, but it's unfortunate that so many perfectly responsible people are going to get smashed.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!