No one’s going to be laughing when this hits the fan. And it will. It’s coming.

You have that tune in your head. I have the image of a runaway train, headed for a massive collision. And we’re all on that train regardless of our political stand, our philosophy or the absolute truths we hold close and dear.

The numbers are out there. They cannot be refuted or massaged forever. The country is headed for collapse. We’ll get a preview in California very shortly. New York, New Jersey, Florida and Michigan are not far behind.

And what is the Government doing? Happy Talk.

Green shoots?? Get ready for the whirlwind.

Anyway, from articles last year, Russia had a budget based on oil being $70/barrel. So it looks like they are feeling frisky.

Thanks for the news LD.

Who knows maybe this will be good news and our politicians will wake up from the drunken sailor spending? Well…I can ‘hope’.

Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina….

Latvia’s currency crisis is a rerun of Argentina’s
By Nouriel Roubini

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95df08fe-55f3-11de-ab7e-00144feabdc0.html

At this point, a currency and financial crisis is pretty much unavoidable; the issue is how to minimise the domestic and international costs of the needed change in the policy regime. As the experience with Argentina suggests, procrastinating will make the unavoidable crash – and the regional contagion – even more ­dramatic and costly.

Something about that statement sounds familiar….

If you write about domestic issues and you’re jealous that foreign policy bloggers get to throw around “Carter II” all the time, you’re in luck:

In every region, fuel prices are up compared against the week before. Gasoline is increasingly more expensive than diesel fuel per gallon. The national gasoline average is now about a $1.42 below the price this time last year. Despite the increase in price, diesel fuel is still $2.19 below this time last year.

Economic stagnation plus energy inflation equals what again? Stephen Gallo thinks that the current government strategy is going to make it “very difficult” to “manage these stagflation risks that crop up on the horizon.” But he’s just the head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange.