The Blue Board

Michelle Obama would certainly have to cut down her luxury trips there, I'd assume.

Is that your honest opinion? I mean, it makes sense.

Think Lehman Brothers and friends on steroids.

The crazy thing is that, unlike the past where we were the only country who could really send us into a depression, there are now multiple countries and unions that could send us into a recession and even worse a depression. If the BRIC countries collapsed, if European Union collapsed, if the Tiger economies collapsed, it would send the world into a global depression.

Everyone is so interconnected that one default have a huge domino effect on the world.

There was a good 60 minutes segment on the EU's financial woes two weeks ago. I highly recommend it.

Basically, because the countries in financial trouble don't own their own currency, they can't use economic tools like interest rates and currency valuation to manage their own problems. So guess who essentially owns them? Germany. Naturally that invokes WWII/Nazi memories, which incites the citizens to favor political candidates who want to pull out of the EU. Since the EU and most currencies are stabilized significantly by foreign debt, there's a lot of fear of the unknown with countries leaving the EU. Which brings the tricky situation of Germany using said debt from bailouts to control elections and incites even more populous turmoil.

Basically it's a giant mess and Germany, whether intentional or not, will own the bankrupt countries unless they revolt against the EU. Then who do we side with?

France is even favoring essentially anti-EU candidates. There's an Economist article this week on it and the potential repercusssions but I haven't gotten around to reading it.

Germany is already, basically controlling the Greek government. But with elections coming up its getting into in unchartered waters whether or not they'll try to suspend those elections if unfavorable candidates look like they'll win.

Good man
Get silver/gold

Friday was my last day of classes, my econ professor gave the best speech I've ever heard, will link when I get to my laptop

http://www.econ.psu.edu/~tll32/Last%20Day.pdf

The interesting thing here is that Germany is trying to avoid another situation like the one leading up to WWII, and everyone else is pushing them into it. What the EU needs right now more than anything is to lower interest rates, but that could cause inflation like what led up to WWII, and Germany refuses to do it based on those grounds. It's really a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for them.

Consumer spending is a strength for the US? A consumer-based economy is a house of cards, which is a concept totally lost on most Fed Governors.

In these cases "bankrupt" would be defaulting, pulling out of the EU, and going back to a national currency. It's a legitimate concern.

Germany enforces strict regulations with bailouts that while financially prudent, stifle economic recovery. It's a difficult concept for populations to accept.

I'll just shoot those that have it and take theirs when the time is right.