@janeishly @Legit_Spaghetti @cstross *they* won't get bailed out. They won't need it, they'll be fine. Risk is externalised.

The inevitable bailouts will be handed to the intermediaries - banks - who are now exposed to unimaginable losses of imaginary money, which would have very real terrible effects on very real people (first order: mortgage holders, mortgage holders' tenants, pension funds and their present and future pension recipients; second order: the dependents of the aforementioned, small businesses having or wanting credit lines, including businesses providing services to the bubble inflaters; third order ff: all of their employees and their dependents, dependent businesses and their employees etc...)

So bailouts will be necessary.

It would be no loss if Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, BlackRock, and all of the other huge gambler banks, sorry "investment banks", went bust. But they've carefully set themselves up at the base of the tower, where the small and medium banks that actually provide the direct credit access to most of the world's businesses and people, are fully dependent on the big fish. Risk is externalised.

So, bailouts will be necessary, I only wish the bailer-outers would - "somehow", this is tricky to set up, if at all possible - hand them only to said small and intermediate banks without flowing directly to the big ones anyway. Let the rigged casinos, sorry, "stock markets" burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp; they're of no use as they are.

So, bailouts will be necessary. But they'll not go to the drivers of the current catastrophe car, they'll be blown on intermediary rent-seeking leeches on all industry. The original lot will be just fine because that props up the imaginary money they can continue to leverage to get real goods, services, and power.

Sorry about the rant. I'm just a wee bit angry.