A short guide to the financial crisis

FlyingRodent over at Liberal Conspiracy makes me chuckle with this:

The US journalist MattTaibbi has another instalment on how the major US banks’ rip-off is now crushing homeowners with the club of the state.

On the micro level, here’s how the scam worked:
- The major US banks buy politicians with campaign contributions, in exchange for rights to expand into more markets and a reduction in regulations;

- Freed from effective oversight, the banks proceeded to aggressively lend to hundreds of thousands of home-buyers, entirely aware that they were lending to people who couldn’t afford repayments;

- The banks then took all those shit mortgages, bundled them up into impenetrable finance packages, and sold them off to pension funds, trade unions etc. as top-notch, ultra-secure investments rather than the near-worthless bags of shite they actually were;

- After a few years of making out like bandits, their pockets stuffed with fraudulently-earned cash, the financial crisis finally exposed the scam, causing major financial institutions around the world to explode. Those that survived did so by robbing taxpayers at gunpoint – give us fifteen bajillion dollars, or we take the entire planet down with us.

- Engorged with taxpayers’ cash, they then refused to lend it back to citizens – theoretically the reason they were given it in the first place – and awarded themselves another round of massive bonuses instead, before enlisting the aid of the state to repossess the very homes they’d used to cause the disaster in the first place.

Result! Bonuses all round at Goldman Sachs; a lifetime of crushing debt and exploding government programmes for you and your offspring.