We're all freaking (financially speaking) doomed...

Quote for the day

But this CDO thing being on everyone's lips is not too surprising, as this whole CDO markdown thing is Big Bad News (BBN), although this few-hundred-billion-dollar subprime mortgage stinker is just emblematic of the whole derivatives stinker, a similar convoluted global spider web of a leveraged-to-the-hilt financial mess that is so big (audience shouts out, "How big, Mogambo?") that it is estimated to be in the $450 trillion range, which is roughly nine (pause) times (pause) global (pause) G (pause) D (pause) freaking P!!

Nine times bigger than the sum total of the complete, total annual Gross Domestic Product output of the entire freaking globe!!!

Source:
The Crumbles of a Subprime Pie Crust, by Richard Daughty
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG070407.html

Prehistoric Swamp Gas on a Global Scale

Quote for the Day

The bottom end of the cylinder helped scientists to uncover what had happened to the Arctic during a dramatic global event known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which occurred about 55 million years ago.

"This time period is associated with a very enhanced greenhouse effect," explained Appy Sluijs, a palaeoecologist from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and the lead author on one of the papers.

"Basically, it looks like the Earth released a gigantic fart of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere - and globally the Earth warmed by about 5C (9F).

Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5034026.stm