Stock Market Crash - AIG's credit-default swaps a sign of global financial delusion

AIG by the way is the company that sponsor's Manchester United. Expect their logo to disappear faster than you can say: I pulled a rabbit out of a hat. What the banking boyz and Wall Street playerz have been doing, ya see, is a scam called creating fictiopnal wealth. The idea that you can get 'something for nothing' lies at the heart of the problem. That you can create money by fiddling around with financial apparatus and playing swap games the way AIG have - is clever, in the same way a drug addict thinks by not getting addicted he is both clever and special.

Before you go pointing fingers and saying: "Shame on y'all" - as it happens, all of us want to be part of the 'something for nothing' charade. We want to pollute everyday (something) but we don't want to believe that has consequences (nothing). Except there are consequences. Also, we want access to energy (something) and we don't like paying for energy (nothing). Except energy is a finite resource.

The best anal;ogy for 'something for nothing' are the kids who go to Idols and with no talent, no effort, no nothing, expect to become instant celebrities, instantly rich. It's a great fantasy to believe in, except that it has nothing to do with reality - and as we all know, the desert of the real eventually catches up and overtakes us, wherever our happy daydreams may have been leading us.

Good morning America, and good morning world.

clipped from finance.yahoo.com Swaps Game The latest trouble spot is an area called credit-default swaps, which are private contracts that let firms trade bets on whether a borrower is going to default. When a default occurs, one party pays off the other. The value of the swaps rise and fall as market reassesses the risk that a company won't be able to honor its obligations. Firms use these instruments both as insurance -- to hedge their exposures to risk -- and to wager on the health of other companies. There are now credit-default swaps on more than $62 trillion in debt, up from about $144 billion a decade ago. One of the big new players in the swaps game was AIG, the world's largest insurer and a major seller of credit-default swaps to financial institutions and companies. When the credit markets were booming, many firms bought these instruments from AIG, believing the insurance giant's strong credit ratings and large balance sheet could provide a shield against bond and loan defaults.