In honor of Thanksgiving I will list the 5 biggest turkeys of the year: 

1. Predatory Lenders – Lending companies and individuals that gave high fee, high interest loans to borrowers that they knew could not afford the loans. Many of these lenders have gone out of business. (Ameriquest, New Century Financial)

2. Greedy Executives – As mentioned in a previous post, executives were excessively compensated for their inability to manage risk.

3. Credit Card Companies - How are credit card companies helping during these difficult economic times? By burying the already leveraged consumer with even more debt. They are raising rates on existing customers.

4. Regulatory and ratings agencies – Organizations like the SEC, Office of Thrift Supervision that inadequately monitored the systemic risk in the financial markets. Ratings agencies like Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s that fraudulently gave high ratings to low grade debt.

5. Minnesota Timberwolves – This isn’t finance related but how could you trade Kevin Garnett?