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Better to be be a capitalist pig

I prefer "running dog".

Did you notice the slaughter of the European banks the last two weeks?

No, I missed that. One of the Kiwi banks I hold, ANZ, took a bit of a hit. I've been wondering if I should bail, but I like how decorrelated New Zealand is with the rest of the world. Nice Asian exposure as well.

What's your take on the Euro banks? Any refs?

There is a definite unease about the upcoming unwinding of our bubbles overseas and the Japanese economy will not do well in this shock either. The move to shorter term treasury auctions will get real ugly also as I can see some drastic price swings after an attack and a major real estate crash.

A GSE implosion would very interesting.

Actually, I have CNBSC on in the backround and Kudlow and Cramer and their Bear and Bull discussion focused on this briefly. I'll do some research as I'm sure Barrons will bury an aritcle our two on this. The Bank of Scotland is being bandied about on every show on CNBSC World/Asia if you have that on the bird or your cable provider. I'll check out Bloomberg too, as they usually cover the Eurobanks during the weekend briefly. The genesis of the debate was that the Euro was decimating the banks over there as they had to reallocate resources due to the decline of the dollar to buy Euro backed investments and notes and that they were slow to do so. The implication I drew from this, is what happens if the USD continues to deflate (as it must) and the Eurobanks suddenly unwind their US commercial real estate holdings. Add that to the consumer weakness and I can see the real estate bubble exploding instead of popping. And Greenspan could not stabalize the dollar fast enough if this were to occur.

By the way, I prefer calling my self a "fire-hydrant dog" instead of running dog. I express my opinion of bad stocks by shorting them the same way a dog expresses himself on a fire hydrant.