that they knew about this "crisis" coming down the pike at least as far back as 2003 when they were using that obscure civil war era banking law to block the state lawsuits against the banking institutions. They knew this was all coming and they needed to get legislation in place that would protect the lifestyles of their rich and blameless allies.

"It turns out that one of the features of the 2005 Bankruptcy bill was to put derivative counter parties [like CDS holders] at the front of the line ahead of other creditors in bankruptcy proceedings. Actually, from what I can tell, they don't just go to the head of the line. They got to skip the line entirely. As the Financial Times noted last fall, "the 2005 changes made clear that certain derivatives and financial transactions were exempt from provisions in the bankruptcy code that freeze a failed company's assets until a court decides how to apportion them among creditors."" - Josh Marshall

Legislation like that doesn't just come out of nowhere.

It takes time for them to figure out what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. And then there is the need to find the right time and the right place to slip the junk in.

They could have solved many of these problems years ago and mitigated some of the disastrous results but, instead, they purposefully let it build while protecting themselves and waited for just the right time to unleash the "crisis" on the nation, knowing it would tie the hands of the next administration financially.

IOW: They did manage to drown the government in a Katrina sized bath tub.

There is a way to help failing banks and jump start the economy, that benefits average americans, rather that the 20% who control 90% of this nation's wealth. And its fairly easy to accomplish -- revamp the credit card industry.