When the smart guys are really dumb. Wall Street "Nobel level" mathmeticians miss the obvious.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

As well as the traders, bankers, auditors, accountants, etc.

I think a 5th grader would realize that perhaps you don't want to have more money than the entire world economy tied up in unregulated credit default swaps.

Now, stupid by design? Stupid by stupidity? Blinded by avarice? Hope no one notices?

Whose gonna fix this part and how are they going to do it?

[phaseolus]

1. I vote for "they were gaming the system"...

n/t

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. My OP might have seemed flip, but I was asking a serious question.

You say "gaming the system". Did they realize they were gaming it so hard that they were actually going to pull down the whole structure?

[phaseolus]

8. My wild-ass guess is 'no'

I think the majority may have only been trying to get an edge for themselves, using the political/lobbying systems to grow "too big to be allowed to fail", and simply didn't bother giving any thought to their actions' effects on the economy. Somebody else's problem. Get while the gettin's good.

But that's only a guess. Nothing to back it up. We'll probably never know for sure. But on the other hand history's shown that amoral bastards exist in the financial sector, so I don't think any of us would be surprised if some genuine evil's uncovered some day. At the very least they'll need a scapegoat or two to throw to the wolves while the big boys figure out the next scheme...?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. Well, it's simple:

If there ain't that much money, there ain't that much money. Poor folks like me deal with that all the time. What we do is tell the creditors, the very few we try to have(sometimes they just attach themselves to us like Thetans, coming from seemingly nowhere...) that we don't have the money.

But you see, when you enter into contracts for money, goods and services that don't exist, the cops have a name for that: Fraud. What we have here is wire fraud, on a scale and an level of institutionalization never seen before.

And out government is using our tax dollars to bail "the right people" out.

Neat, huh?

[cliffordu]

5. That's exactly fucking right: International Wire Fraud.

perpetrated at the highest levels of business and government.

[cliffordu]

4. Yep - gaming the system...I say we strip them down to bare flesh and dump them

in calcutta.

[aquart]

7. No rendition. Put 'em in the stock and charge for garbage to throw at them.

We gotta make a buck on this deal somewhere.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. I guess mathematicians, like some other types of scientists can have their

work and its conclusions colored by their political ideology.