Stephen C. Webster writing at RawStory Friday reported on an explosive interview on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal of William K. Black, professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, in which Black alleges that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called "liars loans" could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive "fraud" at the epicenter of US finance.

In the interview Black "equated the entire US financial system to a giant "ponzi scheme" and charged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, like Secretary Henry Paulson before him, of "covering up" the "truth".

But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America's financial insolvency from its citizens.

The interview, which aired Friday night, is carried on the Bill Moyers Journal Web site.

Black's most recent published work, "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One," released in 2005, was hailed by Nobel-winning economist George A. Akerlof as "extraordinary."

"There is no one else in the whole world who understands so well exactly how these lootings occurred in all their details and how the changes in government regulations and in statutes in the early 1980s caused this spate of looting," he wrote. "This book will be a classic."

But that book only covers the fallout from the 1980s Savings & Loan crisis; Black's later first-hand involvement in that scandal being the ensuing liquidation of bad banks.

"A single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than the entire Savings and Loan Crisis," reported PBS. "The difference between now and then, explains Black, is a drastic reduction in regulation and oversight, 'We now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80.'"

That financial calamity, he explained, was brought about not by mishap or accident, but only after a concerted effort to undermine and remove all regulations, allowing a creditor free-for-all that hinged on fraudulent risk ratings for bad loans.

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Edward M. Liddy grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, earned a bachelor's degree from Catholic University of America in 1968 and a master's in business administration from George Washington University in 1972.  He then began a long career in corporate America, including stops at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, drug maker G.D. Searle & Co in Skokie, Illinois, and Allstate Corporation in Northbrook, Illinois.

During Edward Liddy's apprenticeship in the buccaneering life he was exposed to the most influential teachers and lasting experiences.  While at Searle, Liddy who was CFO worked for a CEO , Donald Rumsfeld, who has always epitomized the height of arrogance as demonstrated by a successful buccaneer.   When he was at Allstate, Liddy presided over the company during and after hurricane Katrina, and Liddy observed first hand the effects of over exposure to risk and subsequent loss of trust when Allstate was faced with the massive losses suffered by homeowners in New Orleans, and Allstate subsequently canceled insurance policies and exited the business of insuring homeowners against casualty, lucrative as the business might have once been and could be.

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