The roots of the subprime crisis | 71 comments (71 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Thought-provoking indeed (4.00 / 2)

but isn't this view not too far from Friedman's neoliberal theories, which view inflation as a purely monetary phenomenon, ie that implicitly state that money cannot grow faster than real wealth?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 at 01:08:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

Isn't that simply a math problem? eg MV = PT?

Friedman would see inflation as a tax more than as debt being repudiated, though, I think. And on that, I'd agree with him, one of the rare things...

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill

by r------ on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 at 01:12:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

My reaction of 'excellent' was to a new way of looking at things - for me. I am not qualified in any way to compare economic theories, though I am trying to understand, and ET has been a good teacher.

'Debt repudiation' was an insight that I appreciated - it gave me something tactile to hang on to while I try to figure out the other stuff ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 at 01:58:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (4.00 / 10)

Yes, I think very similar, as far as the Monetarist argument goes. What Soddy & Daly and the perspective of Ecological Econ bring is the thermodynamic explanation; which adds quite a bit, as it leads us in new directions of theoretical explanation and understanding. In historical terms, Soddy (and Daly and others) using thermodynamics here is more than a bit like Einstein using thermodynamics to explain black-body radiation, and in the course of that bootstrapping himself out of Newtonian physics and into something new. Okay, that's an extremely recondite allusion, but the point is: the new perspective explains phenomena that were only partially visible and partially explainable in the old perspective, AND it goes on to explain other phenomena that the old perspective can't.

In this case, one "other" phenomenon is the recurrent crises in which an economy sheds debt. "You've let money grow faster than real GDP," the Monetarists can/would/have said. "Of course you have a problem." But they don't talk about debt as a claim on real wealth, or how GDP doesn't measure real wealth. (As a measure of wealth it's grossly overinflated--it counts costs as benefits, decreases in wealth as wealth. Air pollution leads to increased lung disease; people spend money to get treated; by the measure of GDP, this is all win-win.) Since the Monetarists are using a basic indicator that is flawed, they can't predict/explain debt repudiation crises as well as the Soddy/Daly EE model.

If wealth as measured by GDP grows at the same rate as the claims on it (which are also imperfectly measured by increases in the money supply; debt is another kind of claim on future real wealth, a claim whose size has some relation to, but is not totally determined by, the size of the money supply), things look hunky dory. BUT GDP is not real wealth, money is not the sum total of claims on real wealth, and the inevitable balancing of real wealth and the claims upon it comes as a surprise in the Monetarist paradigm.

I'm just sketching this out as I go along; the Q is a good one, one I haven't thought or read about before. I don't know that anyone has tackled an answer from within EE.

The other crucially important thing that the new, EE model makes central (and which the monetarist, or neoclassical economics, or NCE model) doesn't see at all, is the thermodynamic foundation of an economy. An economy sucks low entropy matter and energy out of its environment, spins it around in the production "cycle" (in quotation marks because it is really a one-way flow) and spews out matter and energy that is degraded (pollution) or which must, with time and use, become degraded: consumer items, capital. Food. Autos. Solar cells. All of it. In geologic time, all that stuff ends up thrown "away"--in a landfill or cast upon the planet somewhere.

That is, as Nicholas Georgescu Roegen put it, (I paraphrase from memory): "considered solely as a thermodynamic system, an economy consists of nothing other than a set of human institutions, practices and conventions dedicated to taking valuable low entropy and turning it into valueless waste." (He went on to point out that that was of course not the point of the economy, but that it existed to provide us with "an immaterial flux: the enjoyment of life.")

The economy has an ecological footprint on both the uptake and output sides. The size of that footprint determines how much nature is left to go through its cycles, supplying us with ecosystem services, on which civilization crucially depends: water purification. Water (rainfall and storm surge) regulation. Climate moderation (both globally and locally). Pollination services. Soil nutrient recycling. Etc. etc. Ecological Economist Robert Costanza led a team that priced out world ecosystem services, and found that by a conservative estimate they are triple the value of world GDP.

So, this isn't NCE monetarism, by a long shot.

Great Q.

Industrial society is not sustainable. Unsustainable systems change--or disappear.

by Eric Zencey (Eric dot Zencey at UVM dot EDU) on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 at 02:55:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Immaterial flux (4.00 / 2)

Bloody brilliant!

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 at 06:09:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

Great to see a less anthropomorphic economics being postulated. Not only is Political Economy often denuded of its politics, and presented as an apolitical objective reality, but even Political Economics is centred on humanity and society and its needs without a care for its impact on the surrounding ecosystem and the exhaustion of non renewable resources and dumping grounds.

So much conventional economics is still about gaining competitive advantage for parts of the economic world order at the expense of other parts, the ultimate zero sum game, and so little is devoted to improving sustainable capacity (or reducing unsustainable footprints) overall. I think we probably need a new Einstein to bring economics to an entirely new level - one that explains current phenomena, but can also make a decent shot of predicting the shape of things to come.

"It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 06:05:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

Frank Schnittger:

I think we probably need a new Einstein to bring economics to an entirely new level - one that explains current phenomena, but can also make a decent shot of predicting the shape of things to come.

I think of Keynes ad a Galileo waiting for a Newton. Einstein is too far off.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 06:15:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

Perhaps Marx was the Galileo and Keynes was his Newton. We don't have time to wait another few centuries!

"It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 06:58:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

I don't think so.

There are many great intellects out there: all they need is a new set of assumptions, and off they go.

I think that on the basis of an assumption - a Metaphysics of Value - that Value is definable only in relational terms, and an understanding that "Property" and "Money" are only relationships, not Objects, then it is possible to build an entirely new Economic theory from the ground up.

IMHO Such a theory would have a good chance of making better predictions because it is, as Wheeler put it, asking the right questions of Reality.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 07:03:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 0)

That is easier said than done, Chris.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 07:25:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

What are you waiting for? ;-)

To me, it's obvious and intuitive, but I don't have the breadth of knowledge, the intellectual foundations, the language or the logical capability to explain why.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 07:34:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

I'm waiting for "the right assumptions". I wish I understood what you're on about with "the metaphysics of value".

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 01:55:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 0)

Migeru:

I wish I understood what you're on about with "the metaphysics of value"

A Metaphysics of Quality is just another perspective of a

Metaphysics of Quality

You will see there, still on the front page, an old paper of mine "If not Global Capitalism, then What" from which this is an extract...

The Metaphysics Of Value
Robert Pirsig, in his books "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "Lila" sets out a case that Western civilisation has long been under the thrall of an artificial division between "Subject" and "Object".
He proposed that the primary reality is "Quality" which is both formless and indefinable. It is not a "thing" but an event at which the subject becomes aware of the object and before he distinguishes it: ie a non-intellectual awareness or "pre-intellectual reality".
Quality is the basis of both Subject and Object. The bad "Quality sensation" one gets from sitting on a hot stove leads to a consciousness both of oneself - the Subject - and the stove - the Object. Pirsig went on to distinguish between "Static" and "Dynamic" Quality, where the static order of one level forms the precondition for the establishment of a "higher" level.
The perspective I offer upon a new form of Economics more nearly related to Reality (based upon empirical observation) is based upon treating Value as a form of "Quality" as envisioned by Pirsig.
Another perspective upon Value is that of the writer E C Riegel - who in his posthumously published book on monetary matters "Flight from Inflation" - defined "Value" as " the Relativity of Desire" again implying indeterminacy. Taking Pirsig's approach Capital may be viewed as "Static" Value and Money as "Dynamic" Value.
"Transactions" are the "events" at which individuals (Subjects) interact with each other or with Capital (both as Objects) to create forms of Value and at which "Value judgments" are made based upon a "Value Unit".
The result of these Value Events or Transactions is to create Subject/Object pairings in the form of data ie Who "owns" or has rights of use in What, and - by reference to some form of Value Unit - at what Price.
This data we recognise as accounting data.
Note at this point that modern "Neo-Classical" Economics confuses indeterminate Value with a market- determined Price - a confusion best summarised by Oscar Wilde's definition of a Cynic as "someone who knows the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing".
Data may be static such as the written word, or magnetic polarities on computer discs; or dynamic, such as the packets of energy passing between databases and defined under the "Internet Protocol".
This Data identifies the subject with objects such as tangible `Material Value' - such as Land, Commodities, Goods and Services; energy ie`Calorific Value' derived from oil, gas, and other fuels and source.
Data may itself constitute `Intellectual Value' - such as music, video, information, the written word and software and may exist in electronic or tangible form. It, too, may then be defined in a subject/object pairing through the concept of "intellectual property".
Other forms of Value are however not definable by data: who has not paid more than an object is "worth" because it has "sentimental" Value?
In particular we see:`Emotional Value' - at its most basic, the need to love and to be loved, but extending into the concept of Society; 'Spiritual Value' - who am I? Why am I here? Questions in relation to God and the relationship with the eternal.
We may therefore look at the "transaction" or "value event" in a new light. We may, for instance be prepared to exchange Material Value for the right to watch a film - Intellectual Value - from which we derive Spiritual and/or Emotional Value. As these different types of Value accumulate they form Static Value/ Capital, in Material, Intellectual or other forms. The creation and circulation of Value essentially comprises the concept we know of as "Money".

If that doesn't explain what I mean, then tough, it's my best shot: at least I know what I mean! ;-)

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 02:26:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

ChrisCook:

at least I know what I mean!

Succesful communication would require that I think I know what you mean.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 02:30:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 1)

I know, I know!

Don't shoot the piano player, he's doing his best...

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 02:33:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought-provoking indeed (none / 0)

ChrisCook:

A Metaphysics of Quality is just another perspective of a

Ooops !

I mean

A "Metaphysics of Value" is just another perspective of a "Metaphysics of Quality".

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 02:30:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: metaphysics of value, and a new paradigm (4.00 / 2)

Value is definable only in relational terms.

Well, maybe not. Everything we value has low entropy that we can make use of (though not everything that has low entropy has value for us).

No animal can sustain itself by eating its own excrement--the excrement is a degraded, low-entropy output of the animal's life processes--though some animals (like bacteria and dung beetles) have evolved to eat the low-entropy outputs of others.

I'm suggesting that a metaphysics of value has to account for two things:

Some values are relative. You like pictures of Elvis painted on velvet, and I like poster-sized copies of impressionist paintings, and my friend won't stand to have any reproductions hanging in his house at all. Each of these is "low entropy"--a bit of organized matter (not decayed pulp and faded ink or paint)--but we each value what we like, and wouldn't pay money for the other. This is the subjective part of value, and why it's true to say that not all low entropy has value for us. (Poisonous mushrooms are "low entropy," but they don't have value for us either.)

But some values are objective. Everyone prefers food that has not been eaten to food that has already passed through another person's digestive system. A gallon of gasoline is more valuable than the exhaust, waste heat, and water vapor you produce when you burn it. Coal is more valuable than ashes. High grade ores are more valuable than low grade ores, and concentrated ingots of metal you can produce from them (with additional inputs of energy) are more valuable than either. Low entropy is the physical basis of value.

Subject, object, neatly united in one metaphysics.

There are many great intellects out there: all they need is a new set of assumptions, and off they go.

Check out the assumptions of the emergent field of Ecological Economics. This is the field in which you'll find Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, whose "The Entropy Law and the Economic Process" stands as this field's equivalent to Smith's "Wealth of Nations." It's a paradigm that accepts that economic activity is not exempt from the laws of thermodynamics; and that, in fact, in the absence of entropy, we'd have no need for a science of economics, since every good thing ever made would still exist, and we could push cars backwards to fill their gas tanks. They don't and we can't; therefore, we experience scarcity; therefore, there's a niche for the science of thinking rationally and carefully about how to satisfy human wants with scarce means. No entropy, no scarcity; no scarcity, no economists. Entropy makes economists useful; it's a shame that more of them haven't returned the favor.

My diary contains a few citations leading to more info about this field. Minds are working in it.

Industrial society is not sustainable. Unsustainable systems change--or disappear.

by Eric Zencey (Eric dot Zencey at UVM dot EDU) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 05:46:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: metaphysics of value, and a new paradigm (none / 1)

Eric Zencey:

Some values are relative.

Pirsig's approach - which I follow - is that all Value (or Quality) is relative, and definable only in relative terms, by reference to criteria or benchmarks.

Your approach is to use entropy as a criterion or benchmark for Value and indeed you identify "low" entropy as valuable, as distinct from "high" entropy.

So low entropy (however defined and measured) is relatively more valuable than high entropy.

I am not familiar with this approach, but it does have appeal. Nevertheless it is an approach which requires a "Value judgment" - which may be subjective or objective.

ie yours is, again, a "Subject/Object" Metaphysics.

A "Metaphysics of Quality" (or of Value - it's the same reality being addressed)is IMHO a completely different approach, and Pirsig's work repays reading, or re-reading, in understanding it.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Mar 12th, 2008 at 07:45:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I loved Zen and the Art (4.00 / 2)

It's the book that "woke me from my dogmatic slumbers," to quote Hume (I think) reading Rousseau (I think).

And it's a very powerful, romantic story--lone wolf tracking a powerful idea, standing fast against conformity, smug self-satisfaction, and sheer hermetic wrong-headedness. It's been an exemplar for me.

But I do think that the thermodynamic point of view has something to offer. Not that I would replace a "labor theory of value" or a "socially constructed" (i.e. neoclassical economic, utility-based) "theory of value" with a "thermodynamic theory of value." Low entropy doesn't capture all of what we (humans) mean by "value." But that persepctive has a lot to show us; and one implication seems to be, that value has an irreducibly objective component. There's simply no way that the valuation of cast metal as being more valuable than the ore from which it was made is a subjective valuation; the former has lower entropy than the latter, and low entropy is always and everywhere prized above high entropy.

Industrial society is not sustainable. Unsustainable systems change--or disappear.

by Eric Zencey (Eric dot Zencey at UVM dot EDU) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 12:27:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: I loved Zen and the Art (none / 0)

As I said, your approach appeals to me, and I think that while maybe entropy is a quality, it is not Quality itself.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 05:16:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: I loved Zen and the Art (none / 0)

Entropy is a quantity.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 06:06:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: metaphysics of value, and a new paradigm (none / 0)

ChrisCook:

So low entropy (however defined and measured) is relatively more valuable than high entropy.
I am not familiar with this approach, but it does have appeal. Nevertheless it is an approach which requires a "Value judgment" - which may be subjective or objective.

It doesn't matter whether "it has appeal" or not because it is actually the basis of energy technology.

You cannot extract all the energy out of a physical system. All you can do is extract what is called the "free energy" but which might be better called "usable energy". And the usable energy of a system is its energy content minus the temperature times its entropy content.

So low-entroy matter can be turned into high-entropy matter at a net energy gain. That is, in fact, the only way to get any energy.

Low-entropy energy from the Sun is radiated away into space as high-entropy heat. This would happen even if the Earth was a lifeless rock. Life (and the economy) feeds of this entropy flow by taking as much of the "free energy" as possible and turning it into structure rather than let it be lost as heat.

Whether things should have a value proportional to their "free energy" content is a different story, and they probably shouldn't.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 06:05:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: metaphysics of value, and a new paradigm (none / 0)

Migeru:

So low-entroy matter can be turned into high-entropy matter at a net energy gain. That is, in fact, the only way to get any energy.

Hmmm...so how does fission/fusion and e=mc squared come into it then?

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 11:32:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: metaphysics of value, and a new paradigm (none / 0)

Radiation has a higher entropy content than matter.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 20th, 2008 at 09:58:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

GDP (none / 1)

In older (1900-ish) encyklopedias GDP is not mentioned, however national wealth is. National wealth is a term describing the amount of stuff (railroads, livestock, houses, TVs, computers) that a country has within its borders. More stuff/capita = richer. A problem with the concept (it is admitted in those encyklopedias) is that it is very hard to measure, lots of stuff would need counting.

I am guessing (and I would appreciate being corrected if I am wrong) that GDP emerged or at least became important around the time that computerised records of transactionbased taxes came into existence. Suddenly it was very easy to calculate the tax base in a society. Fun for economists who wanted to do models. And a growing tax base/capita is important as it allows politicians to serve free lunches, in way of lowering taxe rates and keeping the same service or increasing service and keeping the same taxe rates. But tax base sounds so mundane, lets call it GDP.

(Frequent readers of ET may already have read this in some other comment.)

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 03:08:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: GDP (none / 0)

A swedish kind of death:

I am guessing (and I would appreciate being corrected if I am wrong) that GDP emerged or at least became important around the time that computerised records of transactionbased taxes came into existence.

GDP emerged out of the work of Simon Kuznets in the 1920's, I believe. Back then it was called National Income. In a way, from the point of view of tax base, replacing the hard to measure National Wealth with the easier to measure (transaction-based) National Income (which measures not wealth but economic activity) makes it easier to tax income than to tax wealth.

Kuznets is credited with revolutionising econometrics, and this work is credited with fueling the so-called Keynesian "revolution". An important book of his is National Income and Its Composition, 1919-1938. Published in 1941, it contains a historically significant work on Gross National Product. His work on the business cycle and disequilibrium aspects of economic growth helped launch development economics. He also studied inequality over time, and his results formed the Kuznets Curve.
...
There are two developments at Kuznets time: the emergence of econometrics and the Keynesian Revolution, both of which found in Kuznets's data an important resource for their advancement. Kuznets, however, was neither a Keynesian nor an econometrician - he took his cues from Mitchell's Institutionalism - as exemplified in his 1930 methodological pieces. Whereas Mitchell devoted his life to the study of business cycles, Kuznets turned to other fluctuations - seasonal ones and secular movements - then to national income estimation, and later to studies of economic growth. As a result, his initial work was on the empirical analysis of business cycles (1930) - a 15-20 year cycle he identified was later attached to his name, the "Kuznets Cycle".

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 05:57:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Kuznets (none / 0)

Thanks for the info; interesting background. I know of Kuznets from the application of his Kuznets Curve to pollution and environmental externalities--the so called Environmental Kuznets Curve, which is used to justify the idea that development requires pollution, and that further development will lead to cleaner air, cleaner water, etc. as consumers in developed nation choose a different "mix" of goods, and when they have enough money, they choose to reduce pollution.

The data don't bear this out; but that rarely gives a neocon pause.

I contributed to the entry on the EKC in The Encyclopedia of Earth, a gated wiki.

Industrial society is not sustainable. Unsustainable systems change--or disappear.

by Eric Zencey (Eric dot Zencey at UVM dot EDU) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 02:37:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: GDP (none / 1)

The US switched off of GNP and onto GDP sometime in the eighties, I think; sorry I can't recall the date, but a quick browser search would nail it down. My interest: get off of GDP and onto something like the Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare. This index corrects several flaws in GDP:

GDP doesn't count draw down of natural capital as an expense item. We lose goods and services (and the quality of life they support) when we lose natural capital.
GDP counts as benefits a lot of transactions that should be counted as costs. You dent your car, and go get it fixed: GDP goes up, though the accident was pure cost, not a benefit to you. Pollution leads to lung disease, which sufferers seek treatment for: the health care costs go into the ledger as benefits--additions to GDP--when in any sane measure they'd be counted as costs against the productive activity that produced them.

Changing from GDP to ISEW might be as simple as having a president appointing a council of Econmic Advisors who will support it. There's no law that I know of that says we have to use GDP or GNP or any particular measure.

And it would be great if NPR's "Marketplace" would start reporting the ISEW everytime they report on GDP. Come to think of it, that's an idea I'll see if I can get anywhere with.

Industrial society is not sustainable. Unsustainable systems change--or disappear.

by Eric Zencey (Eric dot Zencey at UVM dot EDU) on Thu Mar 13th, 2008 at 02:43:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The roots of the subprime crisis | 71 comments (71 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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