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

Why Is Everybody Selling as Buffett Is Loading Up?

he is a bargain hunter -also he is well aware GE and Goldman are under the to big to fail list -and Paulson probably gave a secret guarantee that goldman will profit from his low oversight when he starts dishing out checks for billions of dollars - what you dont see is Buffet running into regional banks - as for the energy companies the bailout has an alternative energy clause in it to give the industry a lot of money maybe these companies are on the list