Hedge funds aren't in trouble because US regulators couldn't make them buy dumb loan packages and the like. That's why the hedge funds have money to buy the good assets that are now on sale.
However, I don't know why foreign buyers bought those things, so I'll just note that they often tell the US how much smarter they are....
The leverage trick is dead end since last year, and it brings debt.
(transcript from Financial Times) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1988234/posts
"Their performance is shocking" http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d679aefe-8f93-11dd-9890-0000779fd18c...
For fun http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&nolr=1...(bust|redemption|crash|leverage|short+selling)&btnG=Search
Oh and the more ruthless ones, the ones short selling and even naked short selling on the stock market are only postponing the inevitable. Gordon Gekko would be proud.
Do you mean to strangle: a speculative investment banker, old time JP Morgan and pals who created the CDS and all that to buy companies cheap later (they've been doing that for over a century, ask Graham Bell), the irresponsible borrowers in US and UK (going bankrupt has a social cost, now a worldwide cost), the war profiteers (you know who), consumerism (non-durable goods are now only pollution), all the excess size strategy (from hummers to expensive corporate software), and finally, with honorable mention, the Sarbanes-Oxley dodging Hedge Funds.
How is it that a country with close to a third of the world GDP could get so bad? How did you let that happen?