Great Quote on The Credit Crisis

The following, which sums up the credit crisis rather succinctly, is a quote from James Petras:

Central Banks in the US, Japan and the European Union have poured (and keep pouring) over $250 billion to the private banks hoping to create liquidity but the banks won't lend — because, as one prominent banker in Palm Springs told me "Nobody knows who's got a turd (worthless investments) in his brief case."....

....So unless the fund directors come clean, empty their brief cases and open their balance sheets we won't know who are carrying the turds: The great unknowns include the unredeemable bonds, the worthless mortgages and the illiquid hedge funds. Without knowledge of the size and scope of the turds, the great uncertainty has frozen most investments and loans — it is paralyzing the financial system. Even Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the federally-funded mortgage companies) can't come in and buy up the 'turds' (otherwise known as 'bad debts'), no matter how many hundreds of billions of US taxpayers' money they are willing to spend.

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