60 Minutes - Financial WMDs: Credit Default Swaps, The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street
Outstanding segment from 60 Minutes that has not been posted previously.
Transcript is below.
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Anyone with more than a casual interest in why their 401(k) has tanked over the past year knows that it's because of the global credit crisis. It was triggered by the collapse of the housing market in the United States and magnified worldwide by the sale of complicated investments that Warren Buffett once labeled financial weapons of mass destruction.
They are called credit derivatives or credit default swaps.
As correspondent Steve Kroft first reported last fall, they are essentially side bets on the performance of the U.S. mortgage markets and some of the biggest financial institutions in the world - a form of legalized gambling that allows you to wager on financial outcomes without ever having to actually buy the stocks and bonds and mortgages.
It would have been illegal during most of the 20th century under the gaming laws, but in 2000, Congress gave Wall Street an exemption and it has turned out to be a very bad idea.
Read the rest of the transcript at CBS...
Sep 12, 2011 at 3:36 PM
Reader Comments (7)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-28/wall-street-s-collapse-to-be-mystery-forever-commentary-by-jonathan-weil.html
Who started the ball rolling Soro's, China, who?
China wanted stakes in U.S. banks DID THEY START THE CRASH?
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/09/04/2578001/cables-china-wanted-stakes-in.html#ixzz1XkUTCWx2
Did China or Jihadists try to bankrupt America? Pentagon report reveals financial terrorists may have triggered economic crash
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361898/Pentagon-reveal-financial-terrorists-triggered-economic-crash.html#ixzz1XkUdn4Vf
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/28/financial-terrorism-suspected-in-08-economic-crash/
Yes all the banks were full of toxic crap they still are but WHO STARTED THE CRASH ROLLING?
It's almost as if we need some kinda short analogy or handle for what a massive cornholing we all took on CDS.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-12/friedman-ignores-trotsky-blasts-both-parties-for-u-s-decline.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-12/house-s-frank-renews-push-to-oust-regional-presidents-from-fomc.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ6lPaiKmwg
Cheyenne...this clip posted by Chunga elsewhere gets into CDS madness...start watching at the 7 minute mark...runs 2 minutes from there.
They have sucked the body dry of blood and right now the are having a boonemarrow feest.
Look around you, and tink for a moment. Look back in time and think what happened.
Sosialis or capitalism, goverment or privat, thats the wall, a simple divertion and it works.
Unnesesery byrocracy, huh.
Why do you think all the fu.. bills have steadily climbed for decades, gess why, and thats from grossly Privat companys.
Byrocracy, in privat or govermntual intress is finaly our pain and we are paying wast amounts of Money(or taxes) for a parasit ind. like the Privat loobying intresses in sucking up corrupt politicians or atleast try to do it.
In the old day, mayby a Nice botle of Wiskey was sufficient, but to day corruption has even infalted.
We are the ones that produces all the fundaments, not the big corps, that thru loobying have monpolized the intire world, even. We dont need those Bilionear or what ever, they need us, we made them stinking rich and know they are stealing money from us thru Banks and Finnace.
Never forgett, they dont produce anything, other that Papermoney. Where they have created a world that produces all they need to bee and stay ritch. At the costs of all of us. We are loosing this, nobody else.
They are Parasits.
Wall Street and the banksters will be just fine! It's their world. They just LET us live in it.