Like a lot of people, I've been thinking a lot about economics lately . Check out this one from the economist. The only way is down Its really important that our World Leaders keep their wits about them these next 5 years and work out something that is sustainable in terms of Global Economic Models instead of just figuring out how to put the stock market back in Bull mode. Non-Performers! From an article Debt capitalism self-destructs thanks for the Facebook post D. Ray :) "The current talk about the need to curb speculation in the commodities and financial markets to stabilize prices is off target, especially for believers of market capitalism. All market transactions are speculative in nature. Speculation can stabilize prices as well as to destabilize them, but only in the short term. Long-term price levels (inflation or deflation), as Milton Friedman aptly observed, are always monetary phenomena. The current turmoil in the financial system, the subprime mortgage implosion, the credit crisis from the seizure in the asset-backed commercial papers market, the undercapitalization of commercial and investment bank, the rating agency dysfunction, the insolvency of monocline (bond) insurers, the massive financial losses by the GSEs and a host of other financial problems percolating under the media radar, are the outcome, and not the cause, of this market turbulence. (See Perils of the debt-propelled economy, Asia Times Online, September 14, 2002.)"