Quote Originally Posted by PurpleHeart View Post
Here's another more colorful explanation, beware of the word choices

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/201...raped-detroit/

Duh, governments, companies, and individuals who mismanage their finances always pay more to finance their debt than their more fiscally responsible counterparts. Detroit's finances are in such terrible shape, that when they borrow money, they have to go to the "pay day loan" type of financing.

Merrill Lynch was identified as one of the villains. The guy running the palce at the time went into the derivatives and mortgage tranches full time felling that it was more profitable and sexy than just stock brokering. he destroyed the company. When the Skank of America took over Merrill Lynch, the owners of M-L stock got pennies on the dollar in BOA stock [[which then declined). A lot of the honest, decent brokers at M-L had a lot of their personal portfolios in M-L stock which, based on the price of BOA stock today means they took an 88% loss.

Skank of America is also in bad shape. The stock brokering arm of M-L is about the only thing they have which is profitable and they have endless lawsuits based on the M-L craziness and the purchase [[just before the crash) of one of the worst of the mortgage bandits.