» Posted by Martin Weil on April 23, 2009

In an analogy, ten of us could have bought a fire insurance policy on our neighbor's house. Even though we like our neighbor and think he is a standup guy, our ten policies for his $1 million dollar house become kind of tempting and all of sudden his house goes up in flames. The fire department (ie, SEC, Fed, Treasury) can't prove arson, so we all get paid $1 million each -- for the loss of one $1 million house! Hmm..something doesn't seem right...

So writes my very astute colleague Rick Ashburn in his firm's latest quarterly letter.

» Posted by Martin Weil on April 08, 2009

This is a much grander-scale disaster than anything that happened in 1929-33. Worse, it dwarfs the abuses of debt, finance and financialization that brought down previous leading world economic powers like Britain and Holland (back when New York was New Amsterdam). ... let me underscore: the average American knows little of the dimensions of the financial sector aggrandizement and misbehavior involved. Until this is remedied, there probably will not be enough informed, focused indignation to achieve far-reaching reform in the teeth of financial sector money and influence.

Fairly strong stuff from Phillips, former Republican strategist turned populist, sounding an awful lot like my pal Al who sends me weekly missives on the imminent collapse of the US financial system.