“Choice” is a powerful word in feminist politics which carries a tacit assertion that there is an opposing group of men who are campaigning to limit women’s choice. What gets in the way of the whole “fists-across-the-nation” righteousness, though, is that issues which are typically framed in terms of women being oppressed by men are often not actually divided along gender lines. This Gallup poll, for example, taken in 2005, found that in the US, Canada, and Britain more women than men favour stricter abortion laws.

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Hmmm. Pension Economics. Sexy.

Optional sexy economic commentary here.

From Deal Journal … one of the simplest yet clear explanations of what’s going on. (I added links to assist with definitions):

It’s a perfect storm. It started with Congress encouraging lending to lower-income people. You went from subprime loans being 2% of total loans in 2002 to 30% of total loans in 2006. That kind of enormous increase swept into the net people who shouldn’t have been borrowing.
Those loans were packaged into CDOs rated AAA, which led the
investment-banking firms [buying them] to do little to no due diligence, and the securities were distributed throughout the world, where they started defaulting.
When they started defaulting, out of bad luck or bad judgment, we implemented fair value accounting….You had wildly different marks for this kind of security, which led to massive write-offs by the commercial banking and investment-banking system.
In the face of those losses…you needed to raise new equity which came from sovereign-wealth funds in part, which then caused political resistance to sovereign-wealth funds, who predictably have withdrawn from putting money into the system….It seemed pretty obvious that would happen. We now find ourselves with a liquidity crisis where fundamentally the cost of money for financial intermediaries [such as investment banks] is significantly in excess of their cost of lending it. So several institutions found themselves in a structurally impossible position. We had a series of bankruptcies, whether Bear Stearns or Lehman, or forced sales like Merrill. Goldman reverted to a banking charter for a lower cost of funds, which today is still not low enough for the business.
So that’s the story of how we got there.

Seems clear to me … socialism married to capitalism … with the normal dose of human greed on the part of all concerned, from those too poor to make their payments yet making promises they couldn’t keep, to social engineers like Clinton, Bush, and Congress, who would boast that “never before have so many Americans owned a home,” to Wall Street and international firms who lent money like drunks fresh from a lottery win. In the end, there is a lot to be said for Canada’s stodgy banking system and restrictive lending practices … too bad though that so much of this spills over the border.
For lots of op-ed … click.
crossposted @ Cjunk
Update: Coulter dishes it out … something about minorities?

call your office. *

Cheers,
lance

Eeeeesh!
Does anybody else derive some joy in knowing these people will be miserable their entire lives?
This is one of the primary reasons I stopped dating leftist dames when I was about 23.