England's Former Prime Minister Acknowledges the Current Crisis is Likely To Be Worse Than the Fall of 2008

In the fall of 2008 many Europeans were counting themselves lucky as having, for the most part, escaped the implosion of Wall Street. While there was acknowledgement that the troubles in the United States had tested the stability of European banks, European citizens thought that the finances of their various countries seemed stable.

Still, many in Europe were introduced for first time how financial trouble in a different part of the World could directly effect them. It has taken nearly three years for those first American contagions to cripple the European continent, but despite the slow nature of the death, Europe has found every effort ineffective and the illness inescapable.

As Europe now deals with their own sovereign, financial, and banking crises, it is now the Americans turn to watch and wait. As Europe takes the center stage this fall, understand that just because it's happening "over there", doesn't mean you shouldn't be concerned. Don't make the same mistake Europeans did three years ago and assume that you are unaffected. You are.....or at least, you will be.

-Schnookums

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*Gordon Brown fears euro crisis worse than Lehman as 1930s beckon*

Gordon Brown has warned that Europe's fast-escalating crisis is now more dangerous than the Lehman Brothers disaster three years ago, threatening to tip the West into a 1930s-style slump unless global leaders work together to take dramatic action.

"The euro can't survive in its present form and will have to be reformed drastically," he told a mostly-Chinese audience at the World Economic Forum in Dalian.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8768575/Gordon-Brown-fears-eu...

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*[Financial] Religious Warfare*

It probably hasn't escaped you that we are entering the next phase of this fine crisis of ours. Those equally fine leaders we've elected to represent us and protect our interests are now almost literally stumbling from one emergency meeting into the other. It doesn't look like Greece can hang on much longer as an EU and Eurozone member without some sort of miraculous intervention.

Well, US Finance Secretary Tim Geithner claims to have the powers of miracle, and he personally brought them to a meeting -an emergency one- in Poland on Friday (where many a European wondered whether he spoke for Washington or for Wall Street, no doubt).

Geithner's big plan is for Europe to take its European Financial Stability Fund, which is projected to be €440 billion by the end of this year, though that is by no means certain, and leverage it about ten-fold to some €4.4 trillion. This, as per Geithner, will calm the markets -and presumably restart economic growth, and job creation, and the housing markets-.

Geithner's perspective is a purely religious one. He has no proof that his idea would work, there is no science that underlies or reinforces it, just a belief system. Nevertheless, ideas like his are very popular, and I for one wouldn't bet against them being unleashed upon us all.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/09/september-18-2011-religious-warfar...

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*Greece should default, exit euro, Roubini says*

Greece should begin an "orderly" default and voluntarily leave the euro in order to escape a "vicious cycle of insolvency, low competitiveness and ever-deepening depression," economist Nouriel Roubini said in a guest column published Monday in the Financial Times.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/greece-should-default-exit-euro-roubini-says-20...

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*Greece worries threaten to trigger financial chain reaction*

Fear that Greece will default on its debt, perhaps triggering a financial chain reaction that will cause another global recession, hurt European stocks and sent American stocks lower for a time.

The market tension Monday came after a German politician suggested Greek finances are so bad the nation might have to leave the coalition of 17 countries that use the euro as their common currency.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20110912/greek-default-worries-threaten-financia...

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