Ken Posner, author of Stalking The Black Swan, talks to the folks at Tech Ticker about the parade of characters that appeared before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission last week, most of whom claimed that it was impossible to see the market meltdown coming.

While Posner defends the idea that the ratings agencies deceived us all, that seems to be a far too convenient explanation for both Wall Street and Washington, yet one that has been quite popular in recent years.

All you had to do in 2004 or 2005 was to walk into a mortgage lender’s office and observe how loans were being made or spend a few moments reading one of the many housing bubble blogs that were popping up at the time and you would have quickly realized that there was something very wrong going on -  the only way a lot of people taking out home loans were going to pay that money back was if home prices kept going higher.