Reply #3: This is as good an explanation of what's going on

[Gman]

as anything I've read to date. As long as banks can value their "assets" (and I use the term loosely) pretty much at any value they want in order to create the illusion of reserve, the system will remain frozen. For decades we have been warned about the debt of this country but the attitude has been that we'll worry about that later. Right now things are too good. Later has come and there is no more "later". How our economy operates has to now fundamentally change.