Remember 2008? Massive debt in the form of failed mortgages and packages of debt so convoluted that parts of Wall Street were selling them and then betting against them at the same time?
Remember the auto industry bailout, nearly a billion bucks in federal emergency relief, millions of people out of work, long-term unemployment, rampant foreclosures?
Nope? Well then join Congress and Wall Street, because it seems clear that despite all the evidence from the previous disaster, we could wind up doing it all over again.
In two recent, but fascinatingly inter-related, articles, the NY Times spells out what is happening -- below the orange collateralized debt tangle: