Any statist government is organized crime because they have the monopoly on force. 40 billion is missing that should have gone to reconstruction of Iraq. Nobody gets in trouble. 2.3 trillion can't be accounted for in the US defence budget in the past. Now it might be up to 3-4 trillion. Nobody gets in trouble.

The SEC fails to do its job. Nobody gets in trouble.

Unless there is at least an intellectual revolution in 2012, the US is screwed.

Obviously, people with the means and the opportunity to sue EY will do so! the motive is irresistable amounts of money. And the auditing profession has been underperforming for decades. It's predominantly full of corrupt and selfish people, like most professions, or institutions (such as the congress, corporations, the church, etc). I guess we should feel lucky that they still provide an avenue for a few good people to do good things.

But the structure and transactions of the investment banks, of global finance, were so obvious and well understood by everybody who paid attention. It would be sheer hypocrisy to pretend that any material losses were attributable to failures of disclosure by Lehman or other institutions. This would rank with the lying and dissembling politicians, treas. secretaries and fed chairmen we watch on TV, year after year, telling us the "derivatives" are too complex for anybody to understand. What hogwash.

As an American, America was screwed along time ago. I doubt that anything will come of this because the pain is too deep. They tried to reform the SEC three years ago and the complaining was so loud they backed down from anything that wasn't purely cosmetic. Congress tried to reform the accounting standards board and now that is before the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. In fact, in that regard the timing of the release of this report is very...um..interesting.

And remember, more than $500 million dollars in Obama campaign funds came from Wa$$ Street.

The most fundamental problem is that America doesn't know how to solve a problem without throwing money at it (see Health Care.) So anything that stops the flow of money stops America.