If the Euro and Eurozone fail...

This out today in the news: US bank warns of eurozone breakup 'pandemonium' Citigroup economist and former central banker Willem Buiter warned Thursday that a fully blown breakup of the eurozone could spell a global depression with unemployment of 20 percent and economic pandemonium. Sketching a stark picture of the stakes facing European leaders as they gather in Brussels to discuss how to save the single currency, Buiter said a breakup would unlikely be planned, orderly or gradual. Buiter, a former Bank of England policy maker, predicted in a research note that a breakup would be "disruptive, destructive and without any winners." Basically, I think this is what he has in mind: Wish us all luck, ladies and gentlemen.

A big Friday

So oil is down to $115.00/barrel today, the Dow is up, the dollar is up against the Euro and the British Pound--since they didn't raise their interest rates--and the Olympics starts today in Japan.

A big news day, to be sure.

The question for the banks--and the American people--is, will we witness and have to finance another bank failure in the next 24 hours? Will the FDIC have to march into yet another bank this evening and close it up because it's "upside down", financially.

Hopefully not, certainly.

If they don't have to, it would be nice to break the 3-week straight we've had on these things.

Hopefully it's a quiet, uneventful evening and weekend.

Enjoy, y'all.

A Weekend of Portents

Three things have come to my attention in the last 12 hours. One I just found out.

First, our knuckleheaded "leader", such as he is, is said to have stood up to say goodbye at the G8 sessions he was attending, and is quoted as saying--I'm not kidding about this--"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter!". See the full story here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/10/report-bush-tells-g8-lead_n_111966.html

Can you believe this guy's ignorance and chutzpah? He continues to show himself to be the 6 year old brat he is and that we thought he was. And then I don't know what's worse--my anger about it or my embarassment.

At least I never voted for the fool.

And then this: Federal Regulators seized and closed IndyMac Bancorp last evening, "marking one of the largest bank failures in American history."
See the original story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/business/12indymac.html?bl&ex=1216008000&en=48af597fcdabd556&ei=5087%0A

It seems they had a good, old-fashioned (as in Depression era) run on the bank. Note that 2nd comparison to the Depression, folks. It's starting to get ever more serious.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, those 2 quasi-independent arms of the Federal Government, dealing with mortgage lenders, etc., may fold, too, we were warned this week.

Finally, the dollar "sinks to within a cent of an all-time low on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" news. It just doesn't get any better, does it? See original story here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4kpsU8pP4QY&refer=home

Greg Salvaggio, a vice president of capital markets at Tempus Consulting in Washington, a currency-trading company is quoted: ``There's a complete lack of confidence right now in the administration's ability to fix these problems.''

No kidding.

It seems to be getting more grave virtually daily and our imperious leader is making jokes about how we're the biggest polluter in the world.

Somehow it's just not funny.

Whither now?

I've thought for a long time that the "turning point" for us, the United States of America, was John F. Kennedy's assassination. A long time.

It's not that it has anything to do with me, of course, and my generation at all. I've thought that, in a much larger sense, a historical sense, that it was at that point that we were no longer the naive, well-intentioned people we were, up to that point. I don't think I'm being naive here, either.

And ever since then, through the 70's, 80's, 90's up to today, it seems we've been going downhill, as a nation.

It was after that that Jack's brother was also killed, then Martin Luther King, and they were both intelligent, strong people who wanted us all to be better--to be a better people--to be the people we could be.

Then there was Milhouse (the lying scumbag), and a brief window of time with a weak follow-up President. After that, a weak one-termer who, again, wanted us to be better people but he got caught up in minutiea of his Presidency (carrying his own bags, for God's sake) that he didn't get to the important matter of his own work. Besides, we didn't want to save energy, anyway.

Then 8 long years of an affable idiot whom way too many people loved--and who almost wrecked us.

A dolt to follow him but who, unlike his son, kept us out of Iraq.

Then 8 important, good years by a man who couldn't keep himself in his pants.

That brings us to now to this nearly fatal time with a self-absorbed man of small imagination, organization and strength who, along with his friends, is also long on greed.

So we come to a point in time where the dollar is at record lows, energy at record highs and we've seemingly lost nearly all control we ever might have had.

And the issue, now, comes to this: if a barrel of oil is pegged to the euro soon--again, God forbid--you may mark it down in any history book to come, that it was at that exact point in time at which the United States became the Britain of a new world order. In short, a second-rate power.

May this not happen anytime soon, if ever.

(Be sure to look below at a great "Zippy the Pinhead" comic from yesterday and some new pictures).

Dollar vs. Euro

You should watch this YouTube video on the US Dollar vs. the Euro. It has some pretty incredible statistics and information in it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RhnHo3RDfg&feature=related


Keep in mind, it's in his best interest to give the information the way he is because he's selling the idea to the people in the room of buying gold and silver but he still has some pretty incredible statistics.

Food for thought.