This wonderful comment by Stephen Colbert was brought to my attention by our Shark friend and foe, Art or Idiocy (yes I still read you Erik).
From The Colbert Report, Wednesday, September 24, 2008:
Stephen Colbert: Now why $700,000,000,000 exactly, when these days you can purchase a bank for 3 pounds of ground chuck and an old bicycle wheel? Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke explained...
Ben Bernanke: Just as when you sell a painting at Sotheby's you don't know... nobody knows what it is worth until the auction's over. Then people know what it's worth. I think it's the same thing.
Stephen Colbert: Art is an excellent analogy. Because I think a lot of people are looking at our economy right now and saying, "my five year old could have done that."
Perfect!
Lesson's from Argentins's economic collapse:
http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2079&Itemid=2
The article at the above link is a very sobering account of what it was like in Argentina after their economic collapse and maybe we should pay close attention to what the writer is trying to tell us.