Harry Markopolos was the fellow who spotted Madoff's Ponsi scheme, reported it to the SEC and encountered a wall of ignorance. Despite Markopolos's best efforts to alert the SEC to this on going crime, it was not until years later, after the scheme had collapsed, that all could see what should have been obvious long before.
John Paulson, the hedge fund manager, spotted what should have been evident to our major banks, not to mention the Federal Reserve; namely, that the mortgage market was resting on quicksand. Unlike, Markopolos, he didn't trumpet his insights. He just sold short -- cleaning up hugely when the inevitable collapse occurred.
George Soros did pretty much what John Paulson did. But, he did it with the Bank of England, instead of a dodgy mortgage market. The Bank of England claimed they wouldn't devalue the pound sterling. Soros knew that conditions were such that, regardless of what the Bank said, devaluation was inevitable. Realizing this, he did what Paulson had done. He sold short.
Understanding our current economic mess doesn't require any special insight. It's been analyzed quite thorougly. Books -- good books -- have been written about it. And, yet our younger citizens go about mindlessly marching on Wall Street screaming about the evil banks. And, if they want to rant about Goldman Sacks and other major banks that's fine. But, how can they overlook the banks that were at the heart of the problem; namely, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Why don't they go after the people charged with overseeing them; namely, the Congressional banking committees headed by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
So why don't the protesters target these malefactors? Could it be because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are run by the government? Could it be that the protesters find it impossible to imagine that anything managed by the government could go terribly wrong?
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