Odds ‘n Sods:

More news and commentary, courtesy of our Economic Editor: Layoffs Spreading Across Corporate America — Fed Pushes Purchase of Assets To Bust Credit Logjam —AmEx Profits Fall, Cardholders Struggle — No Chinese Bailout for Pakistan, Next Stop: IMF — Kerkorian Dumps 2/3 of Ford Stock — Bush Says Economic Panic Is Easing — Markets Soar As LIBOR Starts To Fall — Bernanke Wants Second Stimulus Package — Iceland Agrees To $6 Billion Deal With IMF — France To Inject $6.5 Billion Into Top Six Banks — The view from a French think tank: Summer 2009: The US Gov’t Defaults On Its Debts — Pay-up Time For Lehman Swaps — Financial Crisis Is Shifting Power To Asia — Regional Banks Post Worse-Than-Expected Results; Dow Skids — Ron Paul: Gov’t Bailouts Herald A New Era Of Taxpayer Slavery — Central Banks Scramble To Buy Dollars

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Raymond recommend this piece over at the The Market Oracle: Understanding Derivatives

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Terje in Sweden sent us this: Sweden Launches Financial Rescue Package

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“Liberty tells you that you are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to whatever you earn, and nothing that you don’t.” – Ron Paul

Letter Re: Learning a Second Language as a Survival Skill

Jim,
I’m curious about your thoughts regarding a person learning a second language. In America I guess the language of choice would be Spanish simply due to the incredible influx of Hispanics to our shores thanks to our open border policy.

Personally, I feel it would be a sound investment to one’s array of survival skills to provide them with the ability to negotiate and communicate with a large segment of the population. Also, if one has to flee south of the border for whatever reason having Spanish under their belt along with a few gold pesos [minted as “Onza de Oro“coins in the modern era] could be very helpful.

But, it is a trade-off as leaning a language does not come easy and requires a substantial time investment both in study and practice. Hence, I’m seeking some sage advice. Kind regards, – Michael

JWR Replies: Knowing a second language is indeed valuable, and well worth pursuing. Here in North America, learning to speak Spanish is definitely advisable. Even just a rudimentary vocabulary might prove invaluable. In the context of preparedness, I can think of at least two situations where this knowledge would be important

1.) Barter situations. People feel more comfortable dickering in the their native language. In many agricultural regions in the western US there are sizable immigrant populations.

2.) Offshore relocation. Most of Central and South America is Spanish-speaking, of course with the notable exception of Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken. Language skills are crucial in “coming up to speed” when relocating.

OBTW, one subtlety that many Norte Americanos are not aware of is that the accent in which you speak Spanish is important. It changes in the way that people perceive you and place you socially–at least subconsciously. Hence, you do not want to learn to speak gutter Spanish. If you are tutored, then hire a tutor with a refined Castilian accent. The nature of human mimicry dictates that you will pick up part of your tutor’s accent. Having a refined accent will give you a subtle edge in dickering or when in conversation with customs or other law enforcement officers when you travel abroad.

Two Letters Re: Preparing for Survival Retreat Perimeter Defense

Sir;
I noticed the comments about using 1960s vintage flash bulbs as tripwire warning devices for a perimeter. Something that I improvised and used successfully on active duty in the Army in the 70s was also based on flash bulbs. Remember the flash cubes from the 1970s? The four-sided flash bulbs that rotated and flashed on the mass market cameras of the era can be turned into effective and non-lethal warning devices. If they are still available, get a flash cube and look at the underside of it. You will notice a tiny ‘hammer’ that when released strikes a [“primer”-like]device which causes the bulb to flash. Place an opened paperclip between the hammer and “primer” to block the full travel of the hammer and then trip the hammer. The paperclip will stop it from going the full distance. Do this for at least one more of the flash ‘stations’ on the flash cube. Use clear mailing tape to bind the armed flash cube to a handy tree trunk, sturdy shrub, poll, or what have you. Run monofilament fishing line from the paper clips across the area that you wish to guard and anchor the far end. When intruders walk through the area at night and snag the line, the paperclip is pulled from the flash cube, it fires and simultaneously signals that an intruder is in the area and temporarily dazzles him! We used these during field exercises against the ‘enemy’ and the devices were highly successful. I imagine the flash cubes can still be purchased. Give it a try and see if it works! Best Regards, – Karl V., USA (ret.)

James,
I wanted to clarify that you can just tape cannon fuse to a flashbulb – there is no need to drill a hole. If your particular bulbs have difficulty with lighting the fuse, then you can shave a little of the jacket from the fuse to expose the gunpowder core – then tape the fuse on, with the core contacting the bulb. This works great. – Matt

Letter Re: Currency Inflation Expectations for the US

Jim,
You recently wrote: “The Treasury will undoubtedly be forced to monetize a good portion of the National Debt. This is effectively creating money out of thin air. Each new dollar so created will dilute the purchasing power of the dollars that are already in circulation (Both paper and electronic “dollars”.) This wholesale dollar fabrication will be outrageously inflationary. Be prepared for double digit and then triple digit inflation in the next few years.”

Let’s say the Treasury just invents another two trillion dollars by printing currency and forgiving loans. Let’s say they do that every year for the next five years. How much inflation would that create?
The absolute maximum inflation rate from this example is about 20%, because there’s ten trillion dollars in circulation already. But in practice, the additional money dilutes the much larger pool of value represented by goods and services. This must be true because the entire money supply isn’t enough to buy everything that is for sale.
So the two trillion would get divided into that pool, which is several times larger than the money supply (I can’t find a reliable figure), and therefore the potential for inflation here is actually several times smaller than 20%.

Your prediction of triple-digit inflation is simply impossible unless the government starts printing tens of trillions of dollars worth of currency, every year.
You’ve led yourself astray here for (at least) two reasons:
You think that what’s happening in Zimbabwe can happen here. It can’t. Almost all of Zimbabwe’s economy is channeled through its government. The vast majority of the population is unemployed. The value of goods and real property in the Zimbabwean economy is small, and much of that value isn’t even really participating in the local economy. So the government’s injection of money into the economy is very large with respect to the total value of the economy, and high inflation results. None of these conditions exists in the US, and none is even remotely possible in the next several years. The worst case here is that US per-capita productivity and property values decline by, say, 50% over several years– roughly what happened in the Great Depression– which could potentially result in several years of 10%-to-20% inflation.

But that worst case doesn’t have much to do with the government expanding the money supply. That influence, as I described earlier, can be only in the range of 4% to 5%. The larger numbers are only possible in a Great Depression-type event if the underlying value of property declines dramatically.

Your other mistake is that you [over-estimate] the true magnitude of the current economic problems. Only two parts of the national economy is in trouble– banking and home construction. Between them, they don’t account for a large part of the total economy. They aren’t destroyed, either, merely depressed by some significant fraction. People still need banks and houses. So, bottom line, we’re looking at nothing more than a several-percent decline in the true value of the economy.

Stop [over-stating the inflation risk]. Tell people how to prepare for 10% to 15% inflation if you must. But stop these outrageous predictions of 100%+ inflation. That kind of inflation is literally unprecedented in otherwise functional economies, and there is no reason to suppose the United States economy will become dysfunctional to that level. Thanks, – PNG

JWR Replies: I really do wish that today’s economic problems were restricted just to financial institutions and home construction. But the great unraveling that I’m talking about involves so much more. It involves the derivatives casino that now exists in every major industry and service field. Most of this has built up in just the last 10 years.

Look back at what I wrote about “disappearing counterparties” in the derivatives articles that I’ve been posting for the past two years. This seems to be starting to happen, here and now, right before our eyes. Our friend Tom over at The Contrary Investor’s Cafe alerted me to this brief news item from England, which I will take the liberty of quoting in full:

D-Day Looms for Lehman Contracts
A fresh shockwave from the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers could hit home on Tuesday when complex insurance contracts worth hundreds of billions are settled, it was reported.
Around 360 billion US dollars (£208bn) in so-called credit default swap (CDS) contracts are due to be paid off following the company’s failure.
A CDS essentially acts like an insurance policy against defaults on corporate bonds or loans.
It is a form of derivative contract, gaining a “derived” value from the performance of the bond it is based on.
But because Lehman went bust, those selling CDSs to insure against default on its corporate bonds will be forced to stump up the cash to buyers.
Tuesday is the D-Day for the complex web of transactions. A City source told the Sunday Telegraph: “Everyone will be watching the situation and wondering what’s going to happen.”
AIG, the insurance giant which was one of the biggest sellers of CDS products, is thought to have large exposure to Lehman Brothers and was bailed out by the US Government last month.
The Treasury has pumped in more than 120 billion US dollars (£70bn) into the stricken firm so far.
Other insurers of Lehman’s debt are thought to be hedge funds, who created and sold CDSs as a lucrative revenue-raising exercise in better times.
Although CDSs were originally designed as insurance products to allow investors to hedge against the risk of default, traders have also used them as speculative tools.

Thankfully, the derivatives market is very orderly and every risk has a very tidy counterbalance. So when all is said and done those really big notional numbers don’t mean a lot in the real world. They are just bookkeepers digits tallied at the end of a derivative play. And unless a counterparty does something very odd or downright stupid (a la LTCM), or vanishes, via bankruptcy (a la Bear Stearns) then all of those contracts end up with a very tidy zero sum gain at the conclusion. But the $64 Trillion question is this: What if a lot of major corporations holding derivatives contracts start to go under? Like GM, Monsanto, BP, or United Airlines. How many derivatives contracts are currently in play? Hundreds of trillions of dollars. One estimate was $190,000 USD for every person on the planet. (“The value of the derivatives market is 22 times the GDP of the entire world.”) What happens if and when big corporations go under, leaving their counterparties twisting in the breeze? Nobody knows. This is an imponderable because the derivatives universe was just a fly speck by comparison the last time there was a major recession, and hedging on this scale didn’t even exist the last time there was a global depression.

I’m talking about widespread corporate and municipal bankruptcies causing an avalanche of derivatives contract defaults and subsequent ripples through all the world stock, bond, commodity, real property, lending, currency, and insurance markets.Some might call this inconceivable, but I don’t.

All that I can say is that if things do start to unravel on a more grandiose scale, then I hope that someone is going to have the supreme courage to declare “Jubilee“, and start the entire financial system over from scratch. (“Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts” – Deuteronomy 15: 1). Because without a Jubilee, even Gideon Gono couldn’t come up with the cash needed to settle the mountain of debts and derivatives.

What is at the core of the current financial mess? The heart of man is desperately wicked. (See Jeremiah 17:9, and Mark 7:20-23.) In our generation, there are some people that have built a new Tower of Babel. It is a Tower of Debt. And being greedy, they didn’t limit themselves to tangibles. They heaped up impossibly large conceptuals on top of it all. But unfortunately the derivative contract conceptuals have a tangible bottom line.

On Tuesday October 21, 2008 (or soon after), we’ll get to see how much the value of the Lehmans contracts will get marked down, and whether Uncle Sugar will step in wit a fresh dump truck full of money to “calm the markets.” If the net settlement on those CDS contracts (backed by very dubious CDO “assets” of still declining value) exceeds $30 Billion USD, then every financial stock around the world might plummet. Ditto for every large insurance company involved in the CDS follies. It may be one of those “emperor sans cullottes” moments, or one of those Minsky moments. Helicopter Ben Bernanke will need a whole fleet of helicopters to tidy this up.

I really hope that I’m wrong in pronouncing this warning, because I really like sleeping soundly at night, and hot showers and lights that turn on with the flick of a switch.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Eric mentioned this article: Windowsill herb growing

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Susan Z. flagged this one: ECB council member foresees ‘tri-polar’ currency system

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From our Economic Editor: Dow Up 413 On Signs Of Recovering Credit Market — Momentum Builds For New Package To Boost The Economy — Merrill Lynch To Cut Thousands Of Jobs — Bush Advisor Says “Parts of U.S.” Are In Recession —Turmoil May Make Americans Savers, Worsening ‘Nasty’ Recession — Options Pointing To $50 Per Barrel Oil — Banks Braced For Lehman Bros. Insurer’s Deadline — US Highly Inflationary Monetary Growth Will Lead To Dollar Implosion — China’s Growth Rate Falls As Economic Gloom Spreads East — South Korea’s $130 Billion Guarantee May Not Be Enough — Do Our Rulers Know Enough To Avoid 1930s Replay? — Baby Boomers Go Bust As Retirement Savings Tank — Gobbled Up By The Derivatives Monster (The Mogambo Guru) — Is The Catharsis Yet To Come?

Note from JWR:

In today’s first article, I digress from the usual fare in SurvivalBlog to discuss American politics. You may have noticed that I generally refrain from politics in SurvivalBlog. I only make exceptions for political issues that have a direct bearing on the preparedness and/or liberty of a good portion of the SurvivalBlog readership. Our overseas readers might want to skip reading this article. But be forewarned that in the nascent Second Great Depression, you might be faced with similar situations in your own countries.

Letter Re: Advice on Concealing Storage Food

Hi Jim,
I’ve researched the net in vain trying to find a solution to this problem, which I suspect I share with a great many people now prepping. I’m hoping you can help. The challenge: Where to hide my food stores?

My situation: I live 10 miles from a city of 80,000 in a residential neighborhood. I live at the foot of a small mountain—the area behind my house is woods. I don’t own all of this wooded property, but I’ve never seen the owner. I have significant stores of canned goods, dried oats and beans, flour, sugar, etc.

I am not a craftsperson, so cannot build a false wall, and my husband, who already thinks I’m a loon, would not help me do so. So—where to hide these provisions? The solution needs to be simple enough for a non-carpenter to implement.

I’ve considered burying the food in the woods, and marking these spots (surreptitiously, of course). This is a time- and labor-intensive solution, but perhaps the best one available to me.

If you agree, how to prepare the food to be buried? Oats, flour, etc. in mylar bags, then put into plastic tubes, which are then placed into 2-3 contractor’s refuse bags? Would that be enough protection? Also, does it matter if canned goods freeze?

If you do not agree, do you have any suggestions as to where I might hide it in the house?
I’m hoping you will be kind enough to reply. Even a brief response would be most helpful, and perhaps not only to me. It’s fine to post this email on your blog—just don’t reveal my information. Thank you in advance, and God bless you and yours. – Julia

JWR Replies: I do not recommend burying your food on someone else’s property–at least not the majority of it. Unless you buy very heavy duty containers with watertight seals, there is too much risk of moisture intrusion, or destruction by vermin. There are also, of course, the moral and legal issues of using another’s property.

Many canned foods do fairly well with freezing. The biggest risk comes from repeated freezing and thawing cycles.

If the bulk of your storage food is fairly small, here are a few alternative solutions that I can recommend, only one of which requires the assistance of an amateur carpenter:

Buy a used queen-size “hide-a-bed” couch. Remove and discard the entire bed frame internals and mattress. Build a framework of 2x2s and cut a piece of 3/4″ plywood to support the seat cushions.

You can hide a single row of canned foods (small cans, such as soup and tuna cans) behind books, on bookshelves.

Yet another solution is to buy a few used four-drawer vertical file cabinets. Burglars usually bypass these. Put innocuous-sounding labels in the label holders in bold printing, such as “2007 Tax records” and “2005 Invoices”. If you pack them efficiently, file cabinets can hold a remarkable quantity of canned goods and retort package “bricks”. They are also mouse proof if you place them on a smooth and level floor.

One outdoor solution is to find a used, “out-of-commission” chest freezer. (Usually available free for the asking.) Cut off the power cord. Cover any internal vents with sheet metal. Paint the exterior with flat brown enamel spray paint. Cut (or buy) a cord of firewood and stack it around and on top of the chest freezer. BTW, the same technique can be used if if you have a hay barn–with either hay or straw bales. Or you could buy few hundred used bricks, and make it look like just a pile of used bricks. (And you would of course paint the chest freezer, in flat green, flat tan, or flat brick red, respectively.)

Another outdoor solution is to buy an older, used “pop-up” camping trailer. For some reason, residential burglars ignore these, whereas they will often break in to traditional “hard wall” camping trailers. Pop-up trailers have a remarkable amount of room inside, especially if you remove the seat cushions and mattress pads.If you pay very little for the trailer, you can even go “whole hog” and rip out the interior cabinets, sink, et cetera.

If you have a basement or storage room, you can also use Hide in Plain Sight (HIPS) techniques. One of my favorites is to obtain a lot of used, sturdy cardboard boxes with slip-top lids–such as the type used to ship reams of copier paper. Label them with prominent magic marker labels with things like “Baby Clothes”, “Infant Toys”, “National Geographic Magazines”, “Romance Paperback Books”, “2006 Tax Records”, and so forth. Fill those boxes with your storage foods (in vermin-proof containers). Pile all of those boxes up against a wall. Then add a layer of “camouflage” boxes, containing actual worthless junk. If a burglar opens one of these, he will most likely not dig down to the successive layers of boxes.

Use your imagination. Craig’s List and Freecycle can probably provide you all the storage space and camouflaging that you need, for very little money. Many of the items that you’ll need can be found “free for the hauling.”

When planning you concealment strategies, keep in mind that a burglar is a man in a hurry. In most cases, he won’t take the time to go through everything.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Matt in Texas recommended a piece by Sam Mathid posted over at 321Gold.com as a “must read”: It is Time

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Writing in a recent issue of The Rude Awakening, economic commentator Joel Bowman notes: “From October 10 through October 17, the Dow [Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)] swung a total of 2,225 points at five separate closes. Put another way, that’s an average daily swing, at the close, of 455 points. This is territory of a tumult as yet not encountered in the history of the market. Measured by the volatility index [VIX], otherwise known as Wall Street’s “Fear Gauge,” we saw this week a reading of 81. The record previous to this monumental number, achieved during the year 1998, was a comparatively modest 47.”

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Ed suggested this commentary over at Gold-Eagle: 1927-1933 Chart of Pompous Prognosticators

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Cheryl sent us these economic tidbits: Dutch Gov’t Injects $13 Billion into ING Financial Group — Mortgage Firm Arranged Stealth Campaign — Wall Street Eyes Earnings, Looks For Bottom — Markets Hold Breath As $360 Billion Lehman [Derivative] Swaps Unwind — From Barron’s: It Isn’t Over

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“…While every bank tries to pass the toxic parcel on to somebody else, the system has to find the money. So will compensation for the near valueless contracts and thus now uninsured debt ultimately be made – and by whom? And because nobody knows – not the regulators, banks or governments – who owns the swaps and whether they are credit-worthy, nobody can answer the question. Maybe holders of insurance policies will get the cash due to them, but will that weaken somebody else? The result – panic.

This is the ultra-dangerous downward vortex in which the system is locked. It is why share prices are plummeting. As recession deepens, there will be defaults on securitised bonds and the potential collapse of more banks outside the G7 ring-fence. Nobody knows what proportion of the $55 trillion of credit default contracts that have actually been written will be honoured and who might bear losses running into trillions of dollars. Buying new contracts to insure against default has become prohibitively expensive. Securitisation, and insuring against risk, has effectively ceased. And because the markets don’t know where the losses will fall, banks cannot borrow from each other except overnight or from their central bank. Credit flows are at a standstill. Property prices are plummeting. A famous economist, Hyman Minsky, foretold that unregulated finance capitalism inevitably ends in a meltdown and slump. The world is facing a Minsky moment.” – Will Hutton, commentary in The Observer

Notes from JWR:

We are pleased to welcome a couple of new advertisers: UR-2B-Prepared.com (distributors of the very useful Hydrion fuel test strips), and EM Gear (sellers of a broad line of preparedness and outdoor gear.) You may recall that EM Gear was previously a SurvivalBlog advertiser. They are back on board, now with an even larger inventory!

Today’s first letter comes from Mr. Yankee, whom you may remember from the SurvivalBlog Retreat Owner Profiles.

Letter Re: 11th Hour Preparations: It is Not Too Late to Start

Jim:
It is not too late to prepare for the hard times that are coming. But time is short, so I am going to be brutally blunt. Prices are going up. If you don’t already expect double digit inflation, you haven’t been paying attention. If you are just realizing that you need to prepare for the future, forget buying barter goods. Forget precious metals to swap for what others may be willing to sell.

The idea of buying things so that you can swap them for other goods or services later is bad policy. That’s right. I’m advocating that you buy no precious metals and no barter goods. Instead- you need to prioritize purchases of things that you need right now. Sitting on a pile of sewing needles, can openers, or thousands of dollars of face value in gold or silver is not going to stop you from starving to death, freezing to death, or dying gasping in your own fluids.

This is not a slam on Mr. Rawles’ excellent advice to invest in tangibles. It is not even a criticism of his recent post on barter items to acquire, or of his advice to invest in precious metals. JWR is a voice of reason in a world gone mad. This letter is a reminder that all those things are good advice only after you have squared away your personal needs. Only after you have duplicate sources of potable water, shelter, a substantial food supply, a deep medicine chest, and ample supplies of sturdy clothing and footwear should you invest in barter goods or precious metals.

Here are your priorities:

You need breathable air to live. Most of us expect that to be available for free. Your next priority for sustaining life is shelter from extreme elements (your home and a way to heat it during winter), then potable water. Let me make this explicitly clear. Unless you have clean water to drink, you will die in a matter of days. It is not the government’s job to make sure that you stay alive. It is your responsibility to care for yourself and your dependants. You are responsible to ensure that you have access to clean drinking water or a method to filter, boil, or collect it. If you have no method to do so, go get one. At the very least, plan on a way to boil water over an outside fire.

After air, shelter, and water – you need food. Come what may, you and those who you love will need to eat. Buy food. The cheapest food that you can get will keep you alive, but my advice is to buy extra of what you already eat. Oatmeal, grits, rice, pasta and potatoes are all relatively affordable and life sustaining. Potatoes will store for months. The others will store for years if properly packaged. Yes these alone would make a very bland diet. Use them to stretch your regular grocery meals while the other supplies last.

What next? Get over-the-counter medicines. Diarrhea will kill you. The stomach flu will kill you. Pneumonia will kill you. Allergic reactions will kill you. There may not be any 911 to send help. There may not be an emergency room to flee to as a last resort. There may not be a pharmacy with inventory to sell at 3 a.m.. Buy vital medicines now. Look in your medicine cabinet. If you do not have the medicines to treat an allergic reaction, stomach flu, and a chest cold; go buy them today. $10 spent on medicine could save your child’s life. It won’t if you can’t give it to them. Go buy it before you go to sleep tonight.

If you can avoid getting sick that’s even better than treating illness. Hygiene is critical to health. Buy toilet paper and tissues. You will need them, why don’t you already have them?

You should have sturdy warm clothes and footwear for each member of your family.

And yes, you should also have a means of defense and forage. A simple shotgun and shells for it will let you defend your doorway and harvest birds and bunnies if need be. If you are contemplating buying your first firearm then I strongly recommend that you take an NRA-sponsored firearms safety course as soon as possible. Firearms are a vital tool, but whether you ever need to defend you home, you will need to drink, sleep in a dry place, eat, and stay healthy. God has given you the resources and wisdom to prepare, the rest is up to you. Now pray for wisdom and go take action. – Mr. Yankee.

Letter Re: Advice on Driveway Alarms for Retreat Security

Mr. Rawles,
Thanks for the perimeter defense blog today. Can you please give me your opinion on driveway alarms? There are some cool units I found at drivewayalarmdepot.com. They have units that are wireless and reach out to 3,000 feet. I think they also have a unit that reaches out a mile. Are these infrared units suitable to serious perimeter defense?
Thanks, – RP

JWR Replies: By all means do comparison pricing, but you should beware of the driveway alarms that are made in China. From most reports they are shoddy and unreliable. (Most of them are not truly weatherproof.) The best non-Chinese brand of wireless IR driveway alarm on the market is the Dakota Alert. These are American-made and have long-term reliability. The wireless models use MURS band frequencies, which is a plus. (You can get MURS walkie-talkies tuned to the same frequency, so you can have a portable alerting device right on your belt, that doubles as a voice walkie-talkie.) OBTW, our advertiser MURS Radios sells both discount-priced Dakota Alert system components and MURS band transceivers. They can program the latter for you to match your Dakota Alert frequency. Tres cool.

Infrared alarms can indeed be effective for perimeter security, if properly emplaced on likely avenues of approach. With Dakota Alerts, you can emplace multiple alarm transmitters, each with a distinctive audible alert. (So that you’ll know which approach has an intruder–such as “Alert, Zone Two.”)

Odds ‘n Sods:

I spotted a link for a brief video introduction to Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Note that the map of near-surface geothermal heating potential coincides with a lot of my recommended retreat areas.

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Courtesy of Cheryl, our dose of Gloomage d’ jour: Lehman Tries To Unwind Derivatives Trade — Bush Plans To Host World Summit To Discuss Financial Crisis Response — NYT: Probe Of Lehman Collapse Escalates — Bleak Economic Outlook For Spain — Mervyn’s To Close 149 Locations — Linen ‘n Things Closing All Remaining Stores — Ron Paul: Our Current Monetary System Is Ending — Hedge Fund Manager Thanks “Stupid Traders” For Riches — Crisis May Make 1929 Look Like a Walk in the Park — Is Switzerland The Next Iceland? — Week In Which Global Catastrophe Was Averted — Banks Hoard Cash As Credit Card Defaults Rise — Russia Taps Sovereign Fund To Save Markets — Top Wall Street Bankers To Get $70 Billion Pay Deals

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FerFAL (Our correspondent in Argentina) recommended this documentary: What a real financial collapse looks like. (In Spanish, with English subtitles.)