Saturday, January 31, 2009

is it okay to panic yet... ?

The banks, Boss, the banks...
Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Banks in Florida, Maryland and Utah were closed yesterday as regulators wrapped up the busiest month for failures since the housing slump began in 2006.
Save for the FDIC, one imagines a scene right out of It's a Wonderful Life. In time? Who knows? Could be worse.

Oh wait! It is...
France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment figure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New figures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.
Well, that's over there -- not here. Yet. Meanwhile, this stuff is right out a Stanley Kubrick or Sidney Lumet movie. Hard to fathom it as reality. Maybe it'll catch up to me when I can't withdraw funds from my savings or a brick comes crashing through my window.

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