The global economic meltdown: They were all warned and did nothing

As you read this, your first reaction is "so what?" but about halfway down there's a four-graf stretch that is just jawdropping ...<blockquote><img src="http://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0120a5760b99970c-800wi">

This happy band of G7 finance ministers looked perfectly relaxed as they arrived for their gathering in Washington in April 2007.

But it now turns out that they were all given a secret 60-minute presentation which warned of the dangers of toxic US subprime loans infecting banks across the world - and the risk they posed to the entire global financial system.

Jim Chanos, the hedge fund chief who made his name predicting the collapse of Enron, was invited along with fellow hedgie Paul Singer to brief Gordon Brown (then Chancellor) et al. Hedge funds (along with private equity firms) were being targeted by Europeans as the devil incarnate and so were invited by the American govt to put their case.

Chanos has now revealed that the pair of them warned of "radioactive" securitisations held by banks - and even named those his firm was shorting. But they were "officially ignored" by the G7 ministers.</blockquote>http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/08/brown-ignored-warnings-re-toxic-loans-and-financial-crisis.html

 

Wow. Simply unconscionable.

Yet not at all surprising.