in 329 posts sofar, i've only seen 1 mention of what is coming due.these derivitives that the fatcats on wall st. manufactured to sell these mortgage-backed "investment vehicles" could only be sold with a "crs", a credit relief swap. a crs is a clause in the sales agreements that was supposed to provide some protection for these investors, like an insurance policy. why was it called a swap, instead of a insurance policy? because if it were called insurance, it would have been regulated. but if called a swap, it's unregulated.so they got insurers like aig into these "investment vehicles". only problem was,because of no regulation, nobody forced the insurers to form a pool of capital to cover this, in case of a loss.now as these things were sold back and forth, with each seller taking a profit, the lack of protection only gauranteed that the true cost would escalate, until nobody in their right fiscal mind would lend them the money to cover the losses.the bill is now coming due, to the tune of about 40 TRILLION dollars.
now, what exactly is a derivitive?it is a scheme developed by these fatcats to market bundles of subprime mortgages that were developed by not accountants or economists, but PHYSICISTS AND MATHEMETICIANS! these agreements are hundreds of pages long, and so arcane that virtualy nobody can understand them. but they had crs' in them, so there was protection built in, right? WRONG! with no regulation, the protection that the investors thought they had was not worth the paper they were written on.
still think that deregulation is the answer? if these numbers are correct, 700 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the real bill coming!
i'm reminded of a saying a salesman friend once told me, "if you can't dassle em' with brilliance, baffle em' with bullshit"