The latest report is out for Citigroup which Posts Record Loss on $18 Billion Writedown and will receive $14.5 billion from investors - and Merrill, the largest brokerage, said it’s receiving $6.6 billion. Amazing. Wall Street banks are insolvent and that the Dow has not yet completely crashed is a mystery. The rescue packages total a mere $59 billion, mostly from investors in the Middle East and Asia. Can you believe that? Will we be seeing a bank run ate some point in the future?

ECB doesn’t chew its words and warns that crashing dollar may stop Fed cuts . Was the housing credit frenzy truly worth it?

The big credit squeeze is about to take another alarming turn. A consumer led recession multiply the odds of something much worse than a the ‘R’ word.

As the National Retail Federation kicked off its annual convention in New York, two retail consultants offered negative outlooks for the U.S. retail industry, which has seen consumers pull back amid higher gasoline and food prices, a credit crunch and a prolonged housing market decline.

“It’s anarchy,” said Wendy Liebmann, chief executive of WSL Strategic Retail, frequently repeating the word she used to sum up the latest results of her company’s bi-annual shopper study. “Americans cannot control the big things such as oil prices, falling home values, mortgage costs and rising property taxes, so they want to control the small things,” Liebmann said. “They are watching what they spend on everything.” … MORE

Trends Journal publisher Gerald Celente says Wall Street will crash and predict that many will be living in a storage bin next year. More rationally, even the ultra-conservative Pat Buchanan who doesn’t see any way out calls America, A Subprime Nation.
Not that we’d like to minimize what is occurring in the US, to the contrary, but you might be interested in comparing the patterns of bad economic management. Across the Atlantic, it is far from doing better: European shops see sales crash, a CNN headline revealed last Friday.