AIG writing policies on the assumption that it would never have to pay out. Banks for knowingly packaging bad loans into bundles and — I’m not sure if there can be any other term — colluding with the ratings agencies (Private companies) to give high credit ratings on the bundles. Ratings agencies for granting A+ ratings on piles of poop. You can’t take a lot of buckets of poop, mix them up and then re-packaging them as valuable, but that is how it worked. Then you took your freshly polished poop-parcels and insured them for their weight in gold.
Government regulators and politicians ignored the issue because big money was being printed by the scam. And in the end, the tax payer and consumer took the hit. The crooks all rushed around making new rules — because more laws solve any problem — and then resumed business as usual.
The lesson is that politicians and business cannot be in bed together. Nor can companies and regulators or ratings agencies. At the local level, only appraisers who valued properties “acceptably” got the jobs. So corruption and rule bending all the way down…
