Lord Eschaton highlights this story from the Times, about a small town in Norway that lost millions--for which oldsters and children will end up paying, through service cuts--by getting involved with the greedheads and fraudsters who engineered the Bush administration's mortgage meltdown, and then scuttled away with their commissions. The story is interesting enough--could be your town, eh?--but I thought the lead was buried. Here it is:

Norway’s unlucky towns are the latest victims — and perhaps the least likely ones so far — of the credit crisis that began last summer in the American subprime mortgage market and has spread to the farthest reaches of the world, causing untold losses and sowing fears about the global economy.

Where all the bad debt ended up remains something of a mystery, but to those hit by the collateral damage, it hardly matters.

Er, we've been in a crisis since the summer, yet nobody has assessed--or revealed--how bad the damage really is? Either the crisis is no crisis at all, or else it's so unimaginably bad that nobody dares to find out how bad bad really is. Denial ain't no river in Egypt!

Truly responsible decision making by our excellent ruling class!