And FYI - lest we forget, any populist-rage-motivated regulation that increases the costs of doing business on Wall Street is going to come back to hit Main St 10x harder. If you hadn't realized it yet, the bright young boys on the Street (we call them financial engineers, ha) are very good at finding ways to pass costs along to the end user - the consumer. So be careful what you wish for.

(cont'd) liquidity brought about by a ridiculous volume of margin calls and, according to some, collusion on the part of competitors to yank out the supports. Say what you will about "politics," which has no place in the actions of the Federal Reserve (by its mandate). Just leave the economics to those with degrees. Or PhDs from MIT, in the case of Big Ben. Without the "bailouts," which were more to quell the market volatility than to save the banks, we'd be in a world of sh*t you can't even imagine.

It's too bad the Fed cannot, does not and will not "print" money. They can push or pull on the money supply through open market operations, reserve requirements and the discount window, but they have no authority to direct the Treasury Dept or U.S. Mint. What you fail to see is that the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers of the banking sector were never truly threatened by insolvency. What did them in (precipitating a near-collapse in credit and equity markets)was, at its core, a crisis of liquidity (cont'd)

........truly epic ...... lol. did anybody else on the team score?

gretz was on the kings in '94 :( also, the music was better on SNES O_o