The financial apocalpyse is upon us

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/secret-summit-of-top-bankers/story-e6frez7r-1225827289543

Or so the story above makes it sound.

There will be a government that needs to be bailed out by the IMF to avoid defaulting on its debt sometime this year. Greece, Portugal, Spain; who will it be? Things feel kind of spooky right now because this is where the double dip begins.

Things are that much scarier when a bunch of centralized-planning bankers from around the world get together in secret. They hatch their plots and do their secret handshakes; things turn out worse than they would have.

 

Somethin' like that.

 

176 and counting, actually. Wait till the British tabloids get their hands on the photos of Ben Bernanke, Tiger Woods, a kangaroo and two models from the undisclosed location in Sydney. The FTSE 100 is gonna plummet.

 

FYI, if you don't think guys who spend their days surrounded by interest rates know how to party. ... check out the computer screen of the broker behind the right shoulder of the guy talking.

 

We mock what we don't understand.

Hey, everyone decided today that Portugal will be the one to default. Greece and Spain looking safe, till tomorrow at least.

 

The last time I heard the words "Spain" and "nuclear winter" used in the same sentence, I believe Vladimir Alexandrov was still listed in the white pages.

 

By the way, if any of those countries default, nope, it's not a nuclear winter, but it's a disaster. There is no telling how many hundreds of billions of dollars of exposure various banks around Europe have to the debt of those countries. German banks alone, for example, have $240 billion worth of exposure to Spain. A sovereign default--and it doesn't matter if it is Dubai, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, etc.--will make what the U.S. meltdown two years did to the world's banks look like the good old days.

It won't get to that, though. Assuming we don't have a giant meltdown at once with several countries defaulting, the IMF will step in and do bail outs. The ones I feel bad for are France and Germany. If there is a default anywhere, they are the ones everyone is going to look for for the money because their economies are the largest. That Eurozone idea ain't looking as grand as it was. You can link your financial fortunes, but as long as politically the agendas of those countries are all over the map, it turns out you might be making for some horrible bed partners.