Hasn't anyone in the U.S. financial system ever played Monopoly?

Because it certainly seems like if someone had, this financial crisis never would have happened.

Think about it - what happens when you overextend yourself in Monopoly? Your houses and properties get mortgaged. And what happens when you overextend beyond that? Your houses get sold back to the bank at a loss and you have to try to sell your properties to raise cash. And if no one will buy your properties? You rapidly run out of capital, become insolvent and lose. This process is not exactly mystifying. And it more or less exactly describes the implosion of the U.S. housing market up to this point.

The only thing more mystifying than the inability of the US financial markets to see the forest for the trees when it comes to this crisis is the inability of the majority of Americans to understand just how dire the crisis is. This isn't the Savings and Loan crisis. As a nation we are facing down the failure of the free market. And however much it costs, $700 million seems cheap compared to the $1.3 trillion the Dow Jones lost on Monday alone. As a nation we can either pay for it once in a federal rescue package, or we can pay for it over and over again individually as our retirement funds, stock portfolios, and home equity disappears before our eyes. I'll take the $700 million any day.