Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Bucco, I wish I had the absolute and complete answer. I may not, but I'll give it a try.

To an extent, it's the reverse of what we experienced here in the US two and one-half years ago. The exception is that it's the European Union member central banks trying to fix the problem and unlike the US, with the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, they can't simply print money to use in resolving their problems.

In this case, there are only two financially strong countries in the EU--Germany and France. France can be of little help because the Franc is growing in value, making France's ability to repay their own debts more expensive. So much so that France's willingness to bail out Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain is very limited. Germany is similarly constrained but for a different reason. The German public is becoming highly critical and resistant to the idea of their political leaders bailing out the weaker EU countries.

Now on top of all that, today Germany's equivalent of our Federal Reserve announced their projections that Germany's economic growth will be essentially flat for the next couple of years. So we have the only strong country in the EU getting financially weaker.

Like the US, the people and the politicians in Greece, Spain and Portugal have refused to bite the bullet and substantially reduce government spending and entitlements. Italy's government has said they will be putting together a "plan" in the next few months, but they too will require a substantial bailout from Germany and France.

Because the banks throughout the world are the largest holders of the sovereign debt of these countries, along with the US banks they're pulling in their horns and are withdrawing credit from both commercial borrowers as well as other banks. The result of course is that the owners of stocks are selling in an attempt to avoid taking much greater future losses, seeing an almost unavoidable slowdown in the world economy and huge write-offs by banks around the world.

This is as serious a financial problem as I've ever seen. As you know, Bucco, I've said that if our politicians didn't begin to take serious actions to put our financial house in order, that life would change for future generations of Americans. What's different now it that it appears almost certain that life is going to change for our generation as well.

From what we're seeing today, the US couldn't slow down this worldwide financial train wreck if it wanted to. And there's no chance we could anyway because we're in worse financial shape that even the weaker EU countries.

So that's my view of things. What I'll find interesting on how many people here will assign the blame for this worldwide crisis on President Obama. All I'll say is that he didn't cause this problem, and certainly can't "fix" it, even with a cooperative and committed Congress--which doesn't exist of course!