The meltdown of the U.S. federal judicial system will occur when the public realizes that: (a) judicial discretion in MDLs is replaced by judicial deception; (b) MDLs are grossly unfair, unreasonable, and inadequate for the plaintiffs; and (c) a relatively small group of self-interested "cooperative" attorneys are permitted to be grossly over-compensated for merely acting as dealmakers. The immediate cause of the 2008 meltdown of the financial services industry was the explosion in the unregulated market of CDOs on the frontend and CDSs on the backend. The immediate cause of the meltdown of the U.S. federal judicial system will be MDL's unauthorized use of victims' compensation funds on the frontend and settlement class actions on the backend. As Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham explains, "The disconnect between the power of the MDL judge and the power that the judge exercises rests on a statute that authorizes only the transfer of cases to that judge for purposes of pretrial proceeding with return to their filing homes, as the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in Lexecon. The rest of the operation finds its footing in some form of consent and assertions of implied and inherent authority sometimes on little more than empty air."