Hey, this McCain guy has been involved in two other crashes before this one.

If you want to understand who is behind the current financial/economic whatchamacallit, go to the Daily Kos and read "Three Times is Enemy Action" by Devilstower. You'll learn about the Regan era Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, which was officially described as, "An act to revitalize the housing industry by strengthening the financial stability of home mortgage lending institutions and ensuring the availability of home mortgage loans." It was the act that led to the savings and loan collapse in the late 1980s. Remember that?

If you don't, you'll learn about John McCain's efforts (as a member of the infamous "Keating Five") to keep his buddy Charles Keating's S&L afloat for two years, by arranging for it to be exempted from government regulation. It wasn't an easy thing to do. Senator McCain found the job so exhausting that he had to take multiple vacations at Keating's private Caribian property, via Keating's private jet, with his whole family and the baby-sitter too. On Keating's nickel, of course. But alas, despite Honest John's efforts, Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed. Twenty-one thousand, mostly elderly, Americans lost their life savings when it did. But hey! McCain got $112,000 in campaign contributions out of it.

And doggone it, you know whose name keeps popping up through all this? Phil Gramm's: McCain's favorite economic adviser.

Another thing you'll learn is that the size of the credit default swap market last year was $45 trillion. That's three times bigger than the entire US GDP. Except that the credit default swap market is so NOT transparent, that it may have been as big as $70 trilion. That's about $5 trillion more than the GDP of the entire world.
What that means, as nearly as I can figure, is that there isn't enough wealth on the planet to cover the bad debts that these Masters of the Universe were trading.

So get the hell out of here! Go to the Daily Kos and read "Three Times is Enemy Action."