[randomdata]

Letting Wall St crash and burn means everybody in America's pension disappears - everybody over 65 is out on the street. Everybody who saved money has lost it.

Was that not well understood beforehand? I'm Canadian, but our government will only certify certain investments. Everything else comes with the understanding that all of your money could be gone tomorrow. As such, we plan for such occasions. It is an expectation that an event like this will happen eventually.

[spot]

Here in America that certification is done by "the market" (S&P and Moody's). They gave the CDOs AAA ratings. Of course the fact that they were paid by the same companies that were submitting the CDOs didn't effect their judgement whatsoever. Except they found the emails where they said "go easy on these guys otherwise we lose their business". Oh you mean they made the ratings up? Yea. But that's legal, since the ratings came with no guarantees. They are the "free speech" like poetry. Welcome to America. Sucker.

[yummyfajitas]

You are very confused. Randomdata is describing the certification of banking deposits. In the US, this is done by the FDIC, a government corporation.

[cedlimed]

I think nobody and spot may have been referring to pension funds as well, seeing that many pension funds did have the AAA rated CDOs in their portfolios.