Spain has been told by the IMF to institute major reforms or face insolvency. Italy claims its economy and current crises are based on ties too close to the markets. I always thought the US would implode before the EU. Thank Mao for the Chinese...

On a related note, I'd like to petition our esteemed and respected masters to send native Guan speakers to the midAtlantic so that I may converse and perhaps have a position of pow...uh... I mean... responsibility.

Me and Detroit picked a great time for a long stay in Europe

Watch the exchange rates and work it to your advantage.

I hate to admit... but yeah. That's what we've been doing. Today is the lowest the Euro has been in days, so I'm gonna pay for the apartment in full

Why is this a bad thing? You think the Europeans weren't fucking us when the dollar was down?

By "fucking" you're referring to injecting money into your economy, yes?

And profiting from it, which is some weasely shit. But yes, I concede that converting your money into USD at a discount and then spending them is a form of economic stimulation. Just as spending Euro at their low point is as well.

Opa!!

By "fucking" you're referring to injecting money into your economy, yes?

We're too big to fail.

No matter how much sense it may or may not make economically, I still think it's extremely weird that people go on vacations to shop at huge American shopping malls.

Some people actually HAVE money ...
... of course, they were BORN into it, but they have it nonetheless

Those lucky swine!

American banks will be able to cherry-pick EU assets now.

Not just US banks...

I say fuck them holier than thou continental assholes. When the tower of London is offered on eBay I'mma buy it and have my name put on it in NEON  MUHFUKKA!!!

Those lucky swine!

American banks will be able to cherry-pick EU assets now.

There are no "American Banks", they are and always have been trans-national corporations.

OK Then banks with American sounding names like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, not banks with foreign sounding names like Wachovia or Ally.

I read an interesting spin that this is a regular debt issue that would have been worked through in good time before the internet made people demand instant fixes and solutions. It had some good points in it.

I'd be interested in reading that, if you remember where it was.

I'm actually generally curious about the effect of technology on financial markets, but not quite curious enough yet to spend time in the library reading academic journal articles.  Increased speed of information/transactions should generally have a destabilizing effect, just because that's how systems typically work.  I also think that it tends to create positive feedback loops, which create divergent results like the tech bubble, housing bubble, the debt problems at the moment, etc.  That's especially problematic where governments fail to properly regulate markets, because the role of regulation would be a dampening effect.

dammit.
i was hoping spain was in full insurrection mode a la greece in december 2009.
ah well.

when Japan goes down the rest of the world goes down with it. that is all

Except China!

a post industrial/apocalyptic japan sounds just lovely to me.
i imagine it much like a synthesis of battle royale, versus, and akira, and other awesome movies, but with even more insane screaming.
i'd move back for that.

Feel like taking a trip to Fukushima, beeyot?

Cheap digs right now.

Portugal. I was close.

Next to default: the USA, because all of the "Tea Party" idiots that were elected to this congress are foolish idealogues.

Compromise this, fuckers.

No matter how much sense it may or may not make economically, I still think it's extremely weird that people go on vacations to shop at huge American shopping malls.

it's new/exotic to them.

I say fuck them holier than thou continental assholes. When the tower of London is offered on eBay I'mma buy it and have my name put on it in NEON  MUHFUKKA!!!

it'll be looted though..

No matter how much sense it may or may not make economically, I still think it's extremely weird that people go on vacations to shop at huge American shopping malls.

Try living someplace where everything is three times the price, if you can even get it. I fucking hate shopping, but if I were presented with the opportunity to spend a day buying stuff in a huge mall, I'd jump at it.

Next to default: the USA, because all of the "Tea Party" idiots that were elected to this congress are foolish idealogues.

I went to the library to check out a few documentaries about the American economic crisis at the local library and decided to get one sponsored by Citizens United. The title of the DVD: Generation Zero. I turned it off after the first hour because of the more-than ideologically charged connections throughout the 20th century. Mainly, they used the 60's revolution (if you can call it that) as a significant cause of the financial crisis because ex-hippies, leftists, and, well, blacks, who abandoned the depression-era deregulation ethics of their parents, are now yuppies that are still trying to bring down the establishment through regulatory government intrusion on the private sector. The film never took into consideration other factors that caused the economic meltdown like Reagan's deregulation of Great Depression-era safeguards to our economy which would have kept financial institutions in check, NAFTA, import-export imbalance, corporate flight to foreign lands with cheaper labor, and unnecessary market risks in agricultural futures. The think tanks the filmmakers hired to give thoughtful inquiry seemed to propose the concept of the little man pursuing the American Dream through deregulation of the private sector. Well, if everything were as two-dimensional as an Ayn Rand novel, perhaps any ambitious everyman could rise to the top. But the issue isn't with the little man, but is instead about the corporate giants using deregulation to push their way to the top in order to dominate the markets.

The film was nothing but politically charged chicanery aimed at the left in an on-going left-right mudslinging tirade that seems to never stop to address the problems within our economy.

This film was an overzealous attempt of the Tea Party ideology to try explaining its logic above the mob-like jeering and shouting it is used to doing.