James Clay Fuller poses this possibility

So how did this American dive turn so quickly into a crisis involving the biggest banks around the world? France, Germany, all of Europe, in fact, have had to bail out some of their biggest banks over the past couple of weeks, apparently because all of them owned some of those mostly worthless mortgage-backed securities and/or depended on big American banks for loans. Now its spreading into Asia.

Huh?

It doesn't track, unless, for example, there is some sort of gigantic Ponzi scheme underlying the crisis. Did some of the undeniably crooked subprime mortgage lenders sell the same bundles of mortgages, the same securities, to more than one buyer? Are the perpetrators more criminal and are the banks even more careless and more stupid than we think?

On the other hand, it might be the End Times (In Abrahamic religions, End times are often depicted as a time of tribulation that precedes the appearance or return of the Messiah, a person who will usher in the Kingdom of God and bring an end to suffering and evil). Crackpots like Bush and Palin believe in and are praying for and indeed, helping to orchestrate the prayers of the nutters. No one is hoping for the rapture more than I am as then we will be rid of those loons. Here is a little of what McCain buddy Hagee has to say: