Where In The World?

[Kathianne]

Has this guy been hiding?

http://www.captaineuro.com/

Oh yea,

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-shift-lower-after-draghi-comments-2011-12-19?siteid=yhoof2


Dec. 19, 2011, 11:27 a.m. EST
U.S. stocks shift lower after Draghi comments
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks turned lower as European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi said a fiscal "compact" agreed to at the European Union summit on Dec. 9 was essential for resolving the region's debt crisis and said the economic outlook for the region was uncertain, with substantial downside risks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI:DJIA) was down 37 points at 11,828. The Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQ:COMP) fell 11 points to 2,544. The S&P 500 (SNC:SPX) fell 7 points, to 1,213.

[Kathianne]

I'm afraid this analysis of the German vision is too spot on:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/12/17/angela-merkel-herding-cats-over-a-cliff/


Angela Merkel: Herding Cats Over A Cliff Fitch, the ratings agency that infuriated Europe yesterday by saying that the continent lacks the political and technical tools to save the euro (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/17/us-eurozone-idUSTRE7BF0OX20111217), is right — at least for now.


The latest European plan to fix the euro is already falling apart, just like all its predecessors have done. A majority of the French oppose it, and the man likely to be replace Nicolas Sarkozy in the spring 2012 election has said that it needs to be renegotiated. The countries that don’t use the euro are having second thoughts about turning over control of their national budgets to a European authority where they won’t have a veto; worse, they don’t want the Franc0-German bulldozer to use the excuse of the euro crisis to jam through a whole series of laws that would weaken the competitive advantages of countries like Poland, Hungary and Ireland...

...Angela Merkel is doing her best to herd the cats of Europe, but she is all too likely to fail. There are three ways to fail — and no clear way to win. She can fail by being too slow; at almost any moment a vast firestorm could break out in Europe’s financial markets that would require trillions of dollars in emergency TARP style funding (http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000058830) and she and her partners could be unable to get and deploy the money fast enough to prevent the financial equivalent of a nuclear bomb. She can fail through failure — she can’t herd the cats well enough to get new set of austerity and discipline measures adopted. She can also fail through success: the treaties will be signed but they won’t fix the problems...