The other thing was simplifying and leaving out what else was done with the Credit Default Swaps, esply the CDSs taken out on CDSs, kind of side bets with no material asset anywhere. These were bets on insurance being paid or not.

The tranches were shown as being neatly separate, with AAA sold to one customer, BB to another, the risky slice to a third — or at least, they were sold as discrete investments. My understanding is that the Big Banksters began not only slicing, but dicing, even pureeing the different levels of risk, then got the credit ratings agencies to give the difficult to break apart pate the AAA rating — and thus sold middling and definitely risky loans, now new exotic financial instruments, to unsuspecting buyers as good, solid AAA investments. Clearly a bad thing to do.

And it lead eventually to immense distrust of and among the Big Banksters, so no bank which understood what was going on, that the Banksters had toxic assets hidden somwhere off their balance sheets, but still on their books and possibly waere insolvent and unable to repay even overnight loans, no bank was going to loan to another. Many of big playahs knew that applied to their own situations, figured it applied to the others.

Smaller regional and local banks for the most part took part in little of these goings on — unless they were sold a bill of goods by some Big Bankster or brokers selling on things they didn’t understand (or maybe did?).

Also, as a commenter mentioned at the Vimeo site, when Big Banksters couldn’t sell items they put them “off book”, referred to as, iirc, SIVs or Special Investment Vehicles. (I may be wrong on that nomenclature.)

Please, more knowledgeable readers, correct me where I have this wrong. Or add things I’m missing.

The video gave perhaps too simplistic an idea of how this Big Meltdown came about, which is helpful if people then learn more about the whole Big Mess. It also implied that the purchasers of some of the strange new exotic mortgage loans knew what they were getting into, which I beieve has been shown to be incorrect and that some mortgage brokers simply lied to the borrowers, as well as lying about the financial status of their borrowers. What did it matter? They were selling them on to Wall St. The part about kicking the risk down the road was made in the video, not always how and by whom, however.

” Alan Keyes, a three-time presidential candidate, called President Obama a “radical communist” and a “usurper” and said with him in charge, America “is going to cease to exist” at a pro-life fundraiser Thursday.

When the reporter interviewing him apparently cracked a smile at this, Keyes angrily responded

Yeeeeah baby! Now this is more like it. We need more journalists who will treat these idiots and criminals the way they should be. Laugh at them or arrest them as needed.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/greider

” Alan Keyes, a three-time presidential candidate, called President Obama a “radical communist” and a “usurper” and said with him in charge, America “is going to cease to exist” at a pro-life fundraiser Thursday.

When the reporter interviewing him apparently cracked a smile at this, Keyes angrily responded with “that is not a laughing matter. We’re going to find ourselves in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war.” “

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._0220.html