As we know all too well, it was all too easy for almost anyone to get a mortgage loan during the real estate boom that nearly busted America. Indeed, it was as if the prospective borrower could buy a good credit rating under the table regardless of his worth or ability to pay, the hidden fee therefor to be impliedly deducted at closing, but its actual cost to haunt him or her unto default.

   Many borrowers who should not have qualified for loans under reasonable standards in the first place now claim victim status for themselves, saying they could not read or could not understand the documents, and were conned by fraudsters into signing them. We except the likes of the Brooklyn maid who recently became a citizen. She said she bought four luxury condos in Florida on spec, hoping to flip them and thus secure a bright future for her family. God Bless America. If only she had gotten in and out of the manic market before the panic!

   And so much for the little guy who was persuaded that it is always better to own than to rent, and who believed that his caste was more of an investment than a dwelling - the King is dead! Long live the King!

   We would fain not fault the small fry when there are far bigger fish to fry upstream, from whence the flood of con-money flowed. Standing near the head of the Nile were Pharaoh's licensed floodgate-keepers, the oligopoly of nationally recognized credit rating agencies whose function it is to bless the waters with government-sanctioned seals of approval.

   Clearly, if the credit rating agencies had not been selling officially required investment grade ratings to producers of subprime mortgage pools and other spuriously evaluated collateral-backed securities, the con-money would not have been available to inflate the banks to biblical proportions - "Tear down your houses and use the timber to build rafts!" warns the Epic of Gilgamesh.

   And now, ordinary folks who have lost their credit standing along with their jobs and homes are rightfully outraged by the fact that phony credit rating stamps were bought and sold at the highest financial levels, much to their present expense for they are now bearing the brunt of yet another great public fleecing either perpetrated or condoned by nation's power elite.

   As long as the laws and regulations protecting the credit rating agencies are not expurgated from the books, the nation's "new" government - whose leaders now appear to be fascists in socialist clothing - condones the misrepresentations of the previous government and its purchasers, whose Business-As-Usual is a massive fraud on the misinformed who foolishly march against their own best interests.

   What we see so far in the latest CHANGE is not the peaceful revolution to the social justice wanted but rather a rotation of the guard protecting the usual hogs revolving around the trough. What we see is a reckless disregard of truth if not the actual knowledge of falsity indicative of an actual malice so widespread that we hesitate to hang our leaders lest we have to hang ourselves to boot.