On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:08:54 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:46:43 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
OK, there are 10 parts to the report,
snip
==========
Thanks ED -- lots of good information.

I did not know that Bear Stearns had written 10 trillion $US of
CDSs. Well over 1/2 the US GDP. No wonder the Fed, the other
banks, etc. were (and are) sweating bullets...

Here's the thing that got me: Financial services produced 10% of US
corporate profit in 1980. In 2006, they produced 40%: damned near half the
freaking profit of all US corporations combined! Yike. The business of the
United States is playing with money!
==========
I think we had better parse the word "profit" and see if there
was any real money involved....

Alarming how close this is coming to "majik," where unending
wealth is created from nothing simply by the initiates chanting
arcane and incomprehensible words and phrases.


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).