"Man goes beyond his own decision / gets caught up in the mechanism / of swindlers who act like kings / and brokers who break everything"

We're all in knee-deep hearing about what caused the "financial crisis" / "economic downturn" and to try to tackle the topic in depth all at once will make your eyes sore. Besides, there are plenty of other websites with comprehensive post-mortems (or rather, it's more like an ongoing autopsy) of what went wrong, who is to "blame," what needs to be done, etc.

I'll go ahead and share a few big-scheme thoughts, though:

1. I've tried, and I can't seem to grasp how companies can be "too big to fail" as that term has been bandied about. That's not how capitalism works. More like, these companies were "too big to succeed." The ongoing intervention props up failing businesses in place of allowing them to die and letting the capital move elsewhere. Smaller business that are run more responsibly should have been allowed to increase their market.

2. It is saddening to hear stories of people who have lost money in the Bernard Madoff 'Ponzi scheme' in their retirement accounts. Saddening, yes; unpredictable, no. It amazes me how people have to learn lessons over and over... that we have such short memories and make the same mistakes. People who should know better. Anywhere there is a large accumulation of a future payment of money from a collected horde, malfeasance or forces majeur eventually shows up depleting said horde. And it is not just illegal activity to worry about. From S&L scandals, pension plans being denied (legally!) to those who busted their butts to earn them and counted it as part of their compensation, the looming insolvency of the Social Security system b/c Congress has used it as their own personal cookie jar to pay for anything but Social Security, VA benefits ever-decreasing and inaccessible despite what pols say and promise on the teevee, and the current state of affairs with 401k plans drying up and blowing away, hordes have a way of disappearing. The faces, places, and methods may have changed, but it's the same story since the dawn of man. How do you protect (and grow) your accumulation of money/goods/value? Our modern ways are just as vulnerable to Wall Street saying, "Upptt! Look'it that! The money just disappeared like a fart in the wind!" as they once were to Viking-style looting and plundering. As more comes to pass, people who bury their money in their backyards look less and less foolish.

3. How much of all this is just an excuse for companies to drop some dead weight that in other times would either be "bad PR" or invite investigations or lawsuits?

4. The endless wordings are making the problem appear worse than it is. This would be similar to the September 11 attacks being re-shown literally thousands of times in the several days after. It was unceasing. It was as if 30,000 buildings had been hit instead of three.

I can't help but believe that this has been much the same as "erectile dysfunction" as well. So much of saying that it's normal, it happens to everyone --- and all of these Viagra and Cialis commercials probably give more men the limb noodle. And Pfizer says, here's a pill to make it all go away. Coining the term "ED" manufactured a problem for our hypochondriac communicable-mental-disease society. I'm not advocating ignoring a problem, I'm just despairing of people ignoring a real solution and grasping at the words of politicians who are using the situation to further their social agenda.