Conspiracy of dunces

Conspiring in broad daylight, the banks, insurance companies and regulators are scrambling to use bank money ($3 billion) to backstop the companies that insure the bonds ($2 trillion) that the banks own so the bonds be downgraded and drop in value. The WSJ reports:

“It became clear to all the different stakeholders…that if you had the right people talking, there was an intersection of interests that could be discovered,” a senior Treasury Department official said. “Our goal was to have people focus on the potential of that intersection.”

Take a look at the numbers, and you’ll see the whole thing is a shell game conducted in slow motion with drunken, arthritic hands. It wouldn’t fool a fifth grader, but then most fifth graders don’t have enough money in the bank and have a wish stake in seeing the shell game succeed.