The ghost of Michael Miliken haunts Wall Street 20 years later.

Milikin and Drexel were the ones that invented CDO's and then a team at JP Morgen started packaging them as credit default swaps more recently. The bill that explained these complicated instruments was 11,000 pages and Clinton signed it into law. I bet noone in congress ever read the bill !!

Then, some shysters decided to package a bastardized version called synthetic CDO's and sold then to unwitting companies. The shysters created phoney companies in the Caymans and shopped the product around.

One bank sold them and another sold insurance against them.

Becuase this game is unregulated nobody knows how much is leveraged but once the number of failed companies reaches 9, banks start calling in t_javascript:icon('')heir insurace which will decimate the economy but make the bank even moe powerful and rich.

Anybody think there is a conspiracy against these companies to fail by the banks?

THe recent congressional hearings of the Detroit 3 was fake. Congress knows the American public is fed up with bailouts so the big 3 were the scapegoats ( for now).

I think the banks have Congress and the Whitehouse black mailed. Mr Paulson is entirely complicit in this conspiracy/blackmail. But he will fade into the background as the new administration comes on board in January.

Heads need to roll before Paulson disappears.