If you’re a good capitalist, then this article from CNBC ought to scare you right down to your undies. A couple of key quotes:
“Clearly the (U.S.) Securities and Exchange Commission needs to act,” Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, told CBS television.
“They need to step up very quickly and let us know what happened here and what steps need to be taken.”
Yeah, that free market thing, we don’t like it when it works against our best political interests.
“We now see … wolfpack behaviors, and if we will not stop these packs, even if it is self-inflicted weakness, they will tear the weaker countries apart,” Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told reporters in Brussels before the EU meeting.
God forbid that it becomes so obvious that the PIIGS are collapsing that even the most dim-witted holder of a 401(k) can see that it’s time to bail. Why, we can’t have traders actually doing their jobs and moving investor money away from the source of the current problem.
I’m not rooting for an economic collapse (well, not exactly), but it’s becoming harder by the day to see a scenario in which we avoid avoid one of fairly large magnitude.
You know the drill. Beans, bullets,band-aids. Tools, supplies of all sorts and pay off your debts. Get in shape physically, mentally and financially. If you don’t own it free and clear, it ain’t yours. So on and so forth. Good advice 100 years ago, good advice a decade ago and really good advice now.