Cold > Flu? No.

The biggest lie of 2008 was the lie that 'If Wall Street catches a cold, the general economy catches the flu'. Not true. The domino effect is hugely exaggerated. The private banks produce nothing. They sell debt. The whole process is adding digits to computer entries. They're not supplying a crop, or timber, or energy, or even something like software code. They expand the money supply with loans. That's all. In the event of a collapse of every private lender, the treasury could take over the task of adding new money into the system.

Sure, the casino would crash, but even that wouldn't topple over the general economy. In fact, that would be the first step towards ending the emphasis on speculative profits that distorts the media's coverage of business in America. The DOW and NASDAQ are not the real economy. They're measurements of a layer of gambling that rides on top of the general economy. This distorted picture of the real economy has infected the general public and led many of them to repeated shearings inside a series of designed bubbles.