"Look, the problem isn't that there's NO market for these bad securities. The problem isn't that the prices are "artificially" low. The problem isn't how we account for these assets. The problem is that the industry doesn't want to acknowledge that today's prices are the REAL prices.

There are tons of bidders out there for this crappy paper ... at the RIGHT price. Vulture funds, hedge funds, private equity investors: They're all raising billions and billions of dollars to scoop up cheap real estate, inexpensive bundles of mortgage backed securities, and distressed buyout loans.

But sellers don't want to admit reality. They're not hitting the buyer's bids. They're hanging on to the garbage securities, hoping against hope that they won't have to sell at the true market prices. And the government is busy trying to figure out ways to prop up the price of the garbage rather than forcing banks to take their medicine now, even if it means the result is that they have to temporarily be nationalized or put into receivership."

The John Hancock Tower was just sold on the auction block for 49.2 percent less than it went for three years ago.

"The Obama administration's $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America's ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: The banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.

"Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency."

"A number of major American banks have lost huge amounts of money, and clearly have insufficient capital if they are not literally insolvent. Why else would they be pushing so hard to change the accounting rules to avoid showing what they really have on their books instead of raising private capital? Why else is the U.S. government taking so long to perform "stress tests" and trying to get expectations of overpayment for some of the bad assets on the banks' books before the test results are out? In short, the U.S. government is looking to shovel capital into the banks without sufficient conditions, hiding rather than confronting the actual situation.

"That is just like the Japanese government in their lost decade, or the U.S. officials during the 1980s before they really tackled the savings-and-loan crisis. In those cases, the delay simply made the problem worse over time and in the end the government had to put more money into the troubled banks directly, taking over or shutting down the weakest of them."

Continuing jobless claims topped 5.72 million — the highest ever recorded in 42 years of record-keeping.

Protesters at the G-20 meeting in London give a clear sign that people aren't happy with what they see going on.