The Financial Onion

Until someone starts to systematically peel back the onion skin layers on the Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and those Securitized Investment Vehicles (SIV) there should be no deal. How can the Government decide how much to pay for the “assets” of these “banks” until they know the value of those “assets?” It has been several years now since this debacle started to unwind. To date I haven’t seen any discussion on how the tranches are being evaluated. All I keep hearing is that “No One Knows Their Value.” What have these Masters of the Universe been doing for all this time? Shouldn’t they be looking and seeing what the value of each piece of the tranche is and if not why not? If we could do it with Fannie Mae on ledger cards, back in the day, certainly in the days of sophisticated computer programs it can be done now?

Why isn’t this being done and talked about or are they afraid of what they might find? Are they hiding something? I think that my aluminum foil hat is getting too tight.

Here is Krugman on the “Plan”:

Perhaps what we are witnessing is what Naomi Klein identifies as Disaster Capitalism.

Keep in mind that all of this was warned against. I think this is just the start of a very scary journey in the States. Electing McCain and his economic adviser Phil Gramm who is the father of the Commodities Deregulation Act is only going to make the ride bumpier.

But what do I know?