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this is a systemic matter to my mind.
at the center of this farce were the ratings agencies. without moody's or standard and poor rating these devices as A or above the trade would not have been possible in anything like the way it was. and it's obvious from all research so far that no-one, including the people are these agencies, actually knew what the devices were that they were rating or buying or selling. and it didn't matter: velocity was the friend of every trading house.
don't forget that there was almost **nothing** in the way of oversight from the state and that a direct result of all that neo-liberal nonsense about "free markets" and "enlightened self-interest" and all that. hell, greenspan even opposed setting up a clearinghouse for derivatives that would have introduced a **little** transparency into the whole trade.
and it was driven by a real estate bubble that everyone knew was a bubble.
but somehow or another Neo-liberalism and greed allowed folk to convince themselves that this was unlike other bubbles, something much bigger that would unfold its bubbleness over an eternity.
this is the crux of my personal ambivalence about this. it seems a very narrow charge that is aimed at giving a sense of redress for a very very large event that seems very very criminal in that way that only contemporary capitalism can. you know, that bland criminality, the kind that wears suits with little american flags pinned on them.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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