Quote from Triple X:
Subprime mortgage lending is what has caused the problems on the street, not too much leverage to hedge funds.
Investment banks bought low quality mortgages, mixed them with AAA paper and resold the toxic mess as CDO's. They sold them to foreign banks and both foreign and domestic pension funds. These institutions now have trillions of dollars of bad investments.
The IB's on Wall St. would have been fine, except that word got out about the garbage that the street was peddling, and everyone stopped buying. So firms like Bear Sterns were caught with billions of dollars still on their books, unable to find another sucker to buy a CDO. They never intended to hold this crap; they just want to make their commission. So these fraudster thieves are now being bailed out by the fed, instead of being sent to prison with Bernie Ebers.
It seems like the charlatans such as Cramer are trying to change the subject, and blame all this mess on the uptick rule. What a sick joke. And you idiots are buying into this? The uptick rule? Don't make me laugh. It looks like the street is going to get away with the biggest fraud in history. IMO, the top 5 people in all of these firms, including Goldman Sachs need to spend 10 years in prison on bread and water.