Financial Crisis's European Vacation

As you might have noticed, several U.S. lenders and insurers have fallen recently. Turns out those falls affected some failures in Germany and Belgium, some worries for the entire EU, an end to Ireland's fiancial boom and, oh yeah, Iceland is almost down for the count. What's next in this financial cascade, could we bring down the Euro?

International Economics is a vague, hazy, relatively not unpleasant memory sunk in the "undergraduate file" of my brain. From what I remember, I know I liked the idea of an inter-connected economic world, but I think my professors did a poor job of impressing upon me that: there is a downside. If you can handle a few economic equations, check this out

Paul Krugman: The International Finance Multiplier (a.k.a. Today We Are All Brazilians)

It'll give you an idea of why the world is financially falling apart.  Or you can just watch the National Lampoon's European Vacation above. Same idea, just in amusing pictures.

Click through for more thoughts....


History professors, however, did impress upon me the Peter Pan/Battlestar Gallactica notion of "all of this has happened before and it will happen again." So I'm keeping up with the economic changes to see if they will affect the same political changes of the past...or better yet if we have learned and are able to avoid or mitigate the political consequences of the past.

Readers who actually know something about economics, feel free to chirp in in comments or privately. Directions to good blogs, articles or thoughts are always appreciated.