Banking Meltdown Goes on World Tour

Wanted: Person or persons responsible for sending world into financial ruin. Ladies and Gentlemen, the shit has hit the fan. Don’t believe me? Check out Yesterdays market indices around the world:

In Germany, a leading stock index finished the session down 5.9%
Stocks in Paris were down 6.31%
Stocks in London were down 5.2%
In Colombia, stocks were down 5.9%, while Argentina’s major index fell 4.3%.
Stocks in Brazil roller-coastered through the day plunging 5.1% at open, then recovering, and then trading back down down 3.1%. Stocks in Chile also lost 3.5%
Investors in Japan suffered one of their worst days ever, with the Nikkei down more than 9%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plunged 8.2%.

But I want to know where exactly this all started. I want Warren Buffett or Henry Paulson or someone to come on Blabrmouth.com and tell me exactly how this happened. What mechanism or trickle down effect took place to cause this panic? What sign post up ahead did all the brilliant people blow past in their new Jags while they left the rest of us standing on the side of the road with our checkbooks up our….well, you know.

But there’s more

I heard a statistic yesterday that of all the people that applied for new car financing in September with 800 credit scores, only 79% were approved for the loan. If you don’t know, an 800 credit score is cream of the crop people. That is a staggering figure considering you only had to be taking in oxygen 2 years ago and you could have gotten a house. In London, “This is not a time for conventional thinking or outdated dogma, but for the fresh and innovative intervention that gets to the heart of the problem,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

Where is the bottom? I don’t think anyone knows right now. Consumers have stopped buying anything other than cigarettes, beer, and toilet paper. I just read that as many as 800 car dealerships could go out of business and McCain is going to have the Treasury department buy all of us a house…I know, I just had to say it though. You know, I used to make fun of my Uncle who spent years buying silver and gold ingots and socked them in his safe deposit box. I called him paranoid…now he laughs at me. I’m just sayin’.