Saturday, January 08, 2011

Top Risks of 2011

The Eurasia Group, a non-partisan think-tank which specializes in "The Business of Politics", has released its Top 10 Geopolitical Risks For 2011 list.

Very interesting reading.

Notice, dear friends of the Republican and Tea Party persuasion, that the Top 10 does not include "Obama reveals he's really a Muslim and is trying to kill us all through health care legislation" or whatever crazed drivel the Looney Tunes Dumb-Ass Twins (Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin) are hawking, for profit, this week.

For those of us who do business in Europe and generally like Europe and Europeans (except for The Frogs, of course), #2 is particularly ominous. A gaping inherent weakness in the homogeneous structure of The Euro Zone has been revealed, and since the Bankers Gone Wild cartel can essentially short anything (through derivatives) with free money provided by America's own clueless problem children (Bernanke and Geithner), a partial collapse of the Euro in 2011 is a distinct possibility. The most dangerous word in the English Language right now is leverage.

The Brits are looking pretty damn smart for having eschewed The Euro. Britain, Switzerland, and a crippled, staggering Germany/Austria may be the only ones left standing in the rubble of European prosperity if the Euro Zone implodes.

With most currencies on Earth currently competing to make themselves as worthless as possible, there are huge pressures building in the currency markets. These pressures are being multiplied, as usual, by Bankers Gone Wild using free capital from The Federal Reserve. And as we all know (from the Great Tech Bubble of the late 1990s and the Great Housing Bubble of the 2000's), when pressure builds and builds and builds, something....sooner or later....goes BOOM.

Or, as the noted economist Sly Stone once wisely opined, "BOOM lackah lackah lackah BOOM lackah lackah lackah"

Book I Just Finished: The Gun, by CJ Chivers
Book I Just Started: Traders, Guns, And Money, by Satyajit Das

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