Mr.G

The Very Slow Thaw

felix -these measures were done firstly , to stop the market from sliding and to kill the " panic selling taking place "(it worked)- it was done secondly to get credit markets to thaw - which remains to be seen but I am thinking the markets are ahead of the game here too . They will thaw because you literally have the EU and US acting as banks right now and guaranteeing their debts.
Now that the EU will inject the GDP of France (a little under but not much) into their banks and guaranteeing loans - lets see what happens when the cds 's unravel and they have to put their money where their mouth is . From what I have read a loss of 7.87% in these derivatives is equivalant to the entire worlds output . If any large bank in any EU country goes under because of cds defaults there is no way any country
can guarantee a bailout without destroying the euro -so therefore I am not sure member countries would go along - I guess we will wait and see

Is the U.S. Banking System Safe?

loved the article -very thought provoking -seems there are 2 camps here. camp1 who believes this article and camp2 the ones who continue to believe there is no inflation -everything is fine -indymac had it coming -faith in what the govt, the fed ,news and ceo's are telling them -I think both camps are so far from each others viewpoints that one has to be right -I would love to believe in fairy tales like many here but I have to say I agree with your article -the one thing which has others grasping to the fairy tale still is the credit crisis which is in reality just beginning hasnt really started to infect the general economy (overall) deflation of commodity prices (especially oil)have begun on the assumption the dollar is stronger somehow when in fact the price of oil dropped because of the enormous economic downturn about to occur within the next 12 weeks -right now everyones money is going to the dollar mine is going to gold because this is pretty much the last opportunity to get it on the cheap before huge price increases returns to commodities with the exception being with oil with the final dead cat bounce we are seeing .