HAPPY (Market Collapse) ANNIVERSARY

President Obama just finished giving a talk in lower Manhattan that focused on reminding Wall Street and America what happened last year. Incredibly enough, this speech was necessary because so many on Wall Street seem to have forgotten how pissed most of us were a year ago.


On this anniversary of our market collapse, and the largest bailout in American economic history, the NY Times has an excellent video clip that synopsizes those ugly post-September 15th days (Gretchen Morgenson also tells us that little has changed, while economist Joseph Stiglitz says things are worse).

The incredible thing - which President Obama did a tap dance around - is that the so-called free market geniuses on Wall Street, and in Bush's White House, didn't see this coming ... or did they?

Look, I'm no genius - like Wile E. Coyote or those getting bonuses on Wall Street - but I was one of many who wrote about the dynamics that were helping to set up our market collapse long before it happened. I even put it in my book. Here are some of my favorite posts from 2008. They should make it clear that if I saw the market collapse coming then Wall Street and Bush's White House understood what was coming down the pike as well. Or, at least, they should have seen it coming.

In fact, I believe they did.

In my view the Bush administration was desperately trying to kick the can down the road to the next administration, as I suggested almost two months (July 22, 2008) before the market collapsed. I'll have more to say about what President Obama said - or didn't say - in his speech later this week. So, for the moment ...

Happy (market collapse) Anniversary.

- Mark