Some breakthrough work on the impact hedge funds have had on the real economy was posted this evening on DailyKos by vets74: 1,000 Companies Attacked -> 1,200,000 Jobs Destroyed. 

These attacks combine corrupt MSM lie campaigns with market dumps of "naked shorts" and counterfeit "phantom stock."

. . . . Statistical sampling and employment data for the largest 1,000 attacked companies show they suffered 1,200,000 extra/excess layoffs.

Throw on a macroeconomic multiplier effect...  this gets past 3,000,000 jobs dropped overall.

Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns has a lengthy post on Naked Capitalism entitled The recession is over but the depression has just begun. Basically, Harrison has concluded that despite the fact that the national government now remains the only entity that can "pick up the slack" in generating demand to get the economy moving forward, "large scale government deficit spending is politically impossible." Hence, welcome to America's new Lost Decade.

George Washington of Washington’s Blog, posted Black's recent proposal on Naked Capitalism. Black is Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, and the former head S&L regulator, and author of the book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Black' has been a lonely voice in the wilderness warning that the entire financial collapse, from sub-prime mortgages, to rating agencies, to the creation and handling of credit default swaps, is fraught with criminal fraud that both the Bush and now the Obama administrations have refused to deal with.

Cross posted from The Economic Populist.

Suggestions to solve the financial crises by basically shutting down most of Wall Street are always shouted down by howls of "How are companies going to raise money?" or "How are people going to invest in companies?"

Well, take a good, long look at this graph, which shows the percentage of capital expenditures by U.S. non-financial companies that was raised in U.S. financial markets from 1952 to 2006.