Today’s economics are not for the timid. Above and beyond knowing the basics of how money works, there is another layer which needs to be fathomed. That layer is called by many shadow banking.

To the degree that the population becomes wise to how this works, is the degree to which all of us can avoid the pitfalls of financial oppression.

The warning signs were clear that nothing good would come from the development of Collateralized Debt Obligations, CDOs. I was fortunate to have been in banking and in a group which voiced serious concerns over the development of crazier and crazier esoteric instruments. They were to be peddled as “same as cash” but were in fact far from that. By July 07 the auctions for these began to fail as financial institutions backed away.

For the bankers the bigger fool theory was the rage by then. Systematically, the institutions such as Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia Securities dumped millions of dollars of these into the hands of unsuspecting companies, and even retirees to get them out of their holding before the wheels fell totally off the cart.

When the auctions failed totally in Mid-Feb 2008 300 billion dollars in “same as cash” became illiquid. That is to say they about as far from “same as cash” as you can get.

Those who had trusted that these instruments were really the same as cash found their economic lives grinding to a halt. The regulators of course were flooded by complaints.

Of course, no on e in the industry had really done anything wrong. The result was that at least a number of small investors got back their principal.

Was the press interested? Well, it didn’t boil down to a quick set of soundbytes. Besides, the perpetrators were some of the biggest financial institutions in the country.

Finally, when Bernanke and Paulson held the country ransom for 700 billion dollars the story got media attention.

It is not my ideal of accountability to have the taxpayer pay for the financial excesses of the financial institutions.

The rough condition of the stock market just after the last election was rumored to in part have been due to the rumor that “full bonuses” may not be forthcoming to the architects of the meltdown.

So what kind of bonuses are we talking. Dick Fuld, had in 07 cleared 34 million.

Clearly Rand’s notion of enlightened self-interest did not trump raw greed for the banking industry. For more on Rand, see Objectivism and the 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged”.This all plays nicely into the capital C Conspiracy Theorists who are ready to gloat over the “I told ya so’s”.

These “Too big to fail” are not national institutions. They are international. The idea of a sovereign nation is a thing of the past.

Will the New Vikings prevail? Stay tuned

James Horne has been a financial analyst for over 10 years. He is CEO of Pure Reason LLC, the home of Shadowtraders. His voice has been heard by hundreds of students learning to trade Futures with Shadowtraders online day trading strategies. Before you purchase any trading software, make sure you attend Shadowtraders Monday Night Webinar, and hosted by Barbara Cohen

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