Apparently, Ben Stein didn't get the GOP talking point memo:

[sufrommich]

No blame for those nasty Democrats forcing the banking industry to loan money to poor (read non white) people. Countdown to Stein landing under the bus:

ow did it happen?

Here s one big part of the answer. First, the alert reader will notice that Ben Stein said many times that the amount of money at risk in the sub prime meltdown was just not enough to sink an economy of this size. And I was right...to a point. The amount of sub prime that defaulted was at most - after recovery in liquidation - about $250 billion. A huge sum but not enough to torpedo the US economy.

The crisis occurred (to greatly oversimplify) because the financial system allowed entities to place bets on whether or not those mortgages would ever be paid. You didn't have to own a mortgage to make the bets. These bets, called Credit Default Swaps, are complex. But in a nutshell, they allow someone to profit immensely - staggeringly - if large numbers of sub prime mortgages are not paid off and go into default.

The profit can be wildly out of proportion to the real amount of defaults, because speculators can push down the price of instruments tied to the sub prime mortgages far beyond what the real rates of loss have been. As I said, the profits here can be beyond imagining. (In fact, they can be so large that one might well wonder if the whole sub prime fiasco was not set up just to allow speculators to profit wildly on its collapse...)

These Credit Default Swaps have been written (as insurance is written) as private contracts. There is nil government regulation of them. Who writes these policies? Banks. Investment banks. Insurance companies. They now owe the buyers of these Credit Default Swaps on junk mortgage debt trillions of dollars. It is this liability that is the bottomless pit of liability for the financial institutions of America.

Because these giant financial companies never dreamed that the sub prime mortgage securities could fall as far as they did, they did not enter a potential liability for these CDS policies anywhere near their true liability - which again, is virtually bottomless. They do not have a countervailing asset to pay off the liability.

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/109609

[dysfunctional press]

1. "all bets are off". problem solved.

next?

[voteearlyvoteoften]

2. Reason for secrecy

Now we know why it has to be done in the dark. The masterminds want to retire with their billions and not have lynch mobs waiting at their gates.

[Wilber_Stool]

3. Now is the time for well off Dems to

buy a beater to drive around town and to poke some holes in the knees of their jeans. When it comes time to eat the rich, nobody is going to look at your voting record.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. Wait. Waitasec. That nincompoop believes he knows about ECONOMICS too?

Sorry, but after "Expelled," if Ben Stein tells me that 2+2=4, I'll check with a calculator. Twice.