I just read this post of yours and took you off ignore member. I am willing to put up with reading conspiracy inspired/filled rants from anyone who slammed a water boarding supporter the way you did. Bravo! Bravo!

Interesting stuff Mr Knid. I'll bear it in mind but I am not very knowledgeable about the workings of global finance. As for Bear Stearns, I saw an article on MSN Money last summer by an analyst called Jim Jubak which spoke about Bear Stearns' financial difficulties (something to do with a hedge fund mired in sub-prime - it was the first time I'd heard of the term sub-prime) and suggested that it was part of a trend which would lead to a recession by Christmas (the article was called "The little hedge fund that couldn't" or something like that). Apparently Bear Stearns assets were over-valued because funds of that sort were normally traded in back room deals instead of transparent public auctions. Consequently, it was difficult for anyone in the markets or the credit ratings agencies to truly know the value of the assets and investors were paying out an over-inflated price for these assets. Since many of the assets were sub-prime loans, chance was there was bugger all value left in them. Because of this the assets were likely to be over-valued. Some of Bear Stearns assets were seized by Merrill Lynch but when they tried to sell them they only got back a fraction of the value. According to Jim Jubak the exposure of the fact that Bear Stearns hedge fund was worth $Sweet FA was likely to have a knock on effect throughout the market as investors everywhere began to reconsider the value these sorts of funds. $trillions worth of perceived value could disappear into thin air as market confidence collapsed and credit ratings were marked down. Consequently the current Bear Stearns problems come as no surprise. I do not know whether this supports or weakens your argument but I thought you'd find it interesting to know that there were people predicting all of this as far back as last summer with specific reference of Bear Stearns.

On anther tack, I wonder if you might be interested in something which I posted in The Occult Group not so long ago. It concerns certain allegations concerning George Bush's ancestry. I'd be interested to know what you think.

Thank you for the friend request.

It's good to have you on the friend list too. It was only a matter of time, given that you are an active poster and that your posts denouncing torture were principled and intelligent. Even though we disagree on a lot of issues, I think that you have a lot to offer to most subjects on the boards.

How's it going dude?