Chart of the Week: Euro Doom

Why should you care about the possible collapse of the Euro zone? These charts explain:

U.S. banks are tied to their European counterparts, like it or not. If major European banks like SocGen go under, it will be another Lehman Bros. moment for the world financial system. Bloomberg says that global investors in its Global Poll of 1,031 anticipate Europe's debt crisis will precipitate another economic slump (75%), with a third responding that the current debt crisis will derail the world economy over the next year.

This chart shows the unsettling comparison between this year's market and 2008 when the credit panic hit. As the protesters down on Wall Street have apparently figured out, the rentier class is bleeding them dry, (Ireland paid unsecured bond holders in the insolvent Bank of Ireland about $2 billion last week as part of its cave-in to the demands of international financiers three years ago. Stephen Friedman, who had to resign as Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, gave his former employer, Goldman Sachs $10 billion of taxpayers' money to help it avoid collapse.) and if another round of financial panic erupts, which it probably will with Europe as the fuse this time, they can permanently camp in Wall Street because they will be out of jobs, homes, money and luck. An appropriate venue in which to build the most prominent Hooverville of the 21st century. You can't tell the players without a program, so here it is in one diagram courtesy of the NY Times: