On Friday Congress finally passed – and President Bush signed into law – a financial rescue package in which the taxpayers will buy up Wall Street’s bad investments.
The numbers are staggering, but they don’t begin to explain the greed and incompetence that created this mess.
It began with a terrible bet that was magnified by reckless borrowing, complex securities, and a vast, unregulated shadow market worth nearly $60 trillion that hid the risks until it was too late to do anything about them.
And as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, it’s far from being over.
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Source:
A Look At Wall Street’s Shadow Market: How Some Arcane Wall Street Financial Instruments Magnified Economic Crisis
CBS 60 Minutes, Oct. 5, 2008
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/05/60minutes/main4502454.shtml
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