[Zarathustra]

Originally Posted by Steve_A

Hi Zarathustra,

As I understood it, many banks in the US adopting the Basel II compliancy would have taken themselves out of the market, as I read it, it was quite an expensive operation to make their banks compliant.

So the way that business works is to keep moving forward as usual, to make the most money possible, of course, it's a business, and parallel to that try and negociate or stave off of the deadlines, which the US government has been doing. I think the banks have found themselves too late and the government unsuccessful in staving off for more time.

So what neds to be asked is why SOME banks (Fanny May, Freddy Mack, AIG were given money, and a lot of money, without even asking the American people, that JP Morgan bought out WAMU from the US government for practically nothing, and also Bear Stearn another deal that was engineered by the government) and others were let to rot - 'Oh what a wicked web we weave'.

One thing seems to be clear, the bailout plan is not to help te people it's to help the 'old boys' club'.

Best regards,

Steve

Steve,

I agree.

On a side note, I heard a caller ask an economics professor on cspan this morning about Basel II, and it looked to me as though her was "pretending" to know nothing about it.