CDO's, ABS, CDS and the fine ponzi scheme of investment banking

For the listners of the BBC, they have heard an unpleasant 20 minutes of 3 investment bankers' idle chatter on SDC [securitised debt colleratal], which is the big killer in the ponzi scheme which the collapsing housing market has brought down on our heads, and threatens the US and to a less extent the UK banking systems. BBC listeners would hear of 'shadow banking'-- unregulated banking practices which the toilet bowl cleaner Alan Greenspan and the venal US Congress and White House allowed to flourish and thrive and rake in very, very handsome profits. The BBC questioner hardly got more than a plummy opinion of the tailor made suited, manicured bankers who engaged in aery persiflage and the wooden language of business schools. Listeners had an earful of theoretical models well which ultimately didn't work in practice. Nonetheless listeners got the idea: they got the drift of the huge scam that the banks and negligent government regulators permitted to be played on even the high rollers of private wealth. Dodging questions these bloodsuckers of finance capital admitted no wrong, deep concern, and one even went so far as to boast that his firm had made money off the subprime meltdown which these so called sophisticated instruments encouraged. They all denied that they had fingers in the fraud, with all sorts of caveats as to how the situation is not that bad; that even the bad debts can turn a dollar or a euro in profit, so on, and on, and on...till you want to vomit. What it boils down to is the old banker's complaint: when business is good we get our dollar, but when it's bad, we hold out our tin cup for the exchequer to fill and rescue us from our own sins. Of course these financial wizards of fraud won't ever admit this...they see a rose sky at night...they will continue to see snake oil, but the damage is done...and ultimately the regulators will be forced to tighten the noose around these vermin.