The subprime meltdown has provoked a worldwide crisis

Dominique Strauss Khan the chief pooh bah at the IMF is calling on the world's central governments to intervene strongly into world financial market. Thus, he acknowledges the breath and depth of the subprime ponzi scam perpetrated by the mighty US banking sector here, there, and everywhere in the four corners of the globe. They have to. They've no choice. For the simple and plain truth is that no one, but no one has the foggiest idea as to how far and how deep and to what extent the meltdown has affected world financial markets. Just to give you a taste of the problem, click on fmcenter.org. It will send you shaking in your boots, for it documents that at the height of the housing bubbles new mortgage borrowing, that is in the last quarter of 2005, the total outstanding mortgage debt rang up at the cash register a whooping us$8,66 trillion, which is equal, they say, to 69,4 per cent of the US GDP. Is the US already not only in deep recession but on the slippery slope of bankruptcy? The toilet bathroom attendent Ben Bernanke has had to intervene in the market place and make the already drunk with debt American economy the lender of last resort. Last resort, 18Brumaire repeats! Little wonder Strauss Khan has rung the tocsin alerting the world of the tilt towards panic and tumult in world financial markets places. No one but perhaps the big banks who know had to funnel bad debt to others will escape the consequences, or maybe they won't for the practice of greed of theirs. Yet the new powerhouses of the global economy, read, China and India won't escape the fallout. We are witnessing a wrenching of the soul of capitalism and a crisis which is leading to stagnation a la japonaise and a long trek in the desert before it is all over.