It’s The End Of The World As We Know It

As we are in early innings of the mortgage and housing implosion in the US, the great unwind and equalization is begining to have devastating effects around the globe. This recent story by the Economist reveals how this crisis may prove to be nothing short of the end of the world as we know it.

Eastern Europe

Who’s next?

Oct 23rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

The economies of eastern Europe face stormy times, even if Western banks hold their nerve. The political fallout may be even worse

WILL an ex-communist country be the next Iceland? The dramatic collapse of that country’s economy, endangering savings from hapless depositors in Britain and elsewhere, has highlighted other risky but obscure corners of the world’s financial system. The stability of the Ukrainian hryvnia, the implications of the Latvian property crash and Hungarians’ troubling penchant for loans in Swiss francs are among the exotic topics now crowding policymakers’ desks.

Here is the full story.

This story gies hand in hand with another I posted a couple of weeks back called US Banks Are Not Alone - Global Insolvency.

The New York Times published an interesting chart on how leveraged the global banking system actually is.  In comparison, the US does not look too bad. Then of course, you have to ask yourself ‘Are the US banks being totally honest?’  This chart assumes everyone is being honest, but if they were we would not be in this crisis now, right. Despite that little issue, this is still an interesting

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