The Great Subprime Debacle: The Sting (Part II)
WilliamBanzai7

Doyle Lonnegan: Your boss is quite a card player, Mr. Kelly; how does he do it?
Johnny Hooker: He cheats.
(From the Sting)

It is ironic, that on the weekend that arguably
the greatest confidence game of all time is
reaching crescendo in Washington in the form of the
mother of all
Wall Street bailouts, Paul Newman, the star of The Sting,
the greatest Confidence movie of all time, has passed on.
In the Sting, Newman plays Henry "Shaw" Gondorf, a master con man who
orchestrates the greatest con until September 2008.

The Sting is chuck full of gangsters, incompetent cops, grifters,
colorful schemers, con men, marks
and shills, and keeps you on the edge of your seat straight though to its conclusion.
Just like the Great Subprime Swindle of 2008, there are
twists and turns galore, and you don't know how it
is going to until the final 10 minutes.

Welcome to the Great Subprime Swindle of 2008.
We are barely into what could not be a more fitting sequel to
the Sting.
In this new episode, the Wall Street gang succeeds
in conning Main Street USA out of its real
estate/retirement nest egg by
employing thousands of mortgage brokers, investment banking con men and
dubious ponziesque securities called collateralized Debt
Obligations and Credit Default Swaps. Like the Sting, the cast
is chuck full of colorful characters like Alan (the "Maestro") Greenspan, Dick (the "Gorilla") Fuld,
Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, James "Jimmy" Cayne
Henry "Hank" Paulsen and
Ben Bernanke (who will soon be known as "Father Moral Hazard"). What is it
with gangsters, con men, bankers and
nicknames? In the plot we get to watch innocent
bystanders a dopey mark like
AIG and now the American taxpayer, get conned and swindled out
roughly $700 Billion USD, no one knows for sure. As
in the sting, the key stone cops, show up
long after the action has taken place.

One hundred years ago a man named Franklin Keyes, Esq.
(you guessed it, a Wall Street lawyer) published a tract
titled: "Wall Street Speculation, Its Tricks and Its Tragedies".
In it he says: "Wall Street is dominated by some of the brainiest
and shrewdest men in the country, natural born sharpers and schemers,
and before the average man can get the better of them,
except through the merest chance,
he will have to eat brain food for a long time."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Paul Newman, rest in peace.