U.S. Taxpayers now on hook for future Wall Street and FOREIGN MARKET gambling losses

[Sammich]

Since the creation of the derivative and credit default swap, just dumping the failing EU countries isn't so easy. As I mentioned before the derivatives market is at $1.2 quadrillion dollars. Basically these are insurance (i.e. bets) placed without regulations on anything and everything including on entities the betters have no ownership of. A simple analogy would be allowing a doctor (and any friends he tells) to take out life insurance policies on his terminally ill patients. If enough of these devices are triggered were greece, italy or spain to default, there could be a catastrophic cascading affect as financial institutions holding the derivatives/credit default swaps on those countries find they are unable to make payouts and begin failing one after another. Oh and by the way, there is a reason why so many big financial instutions are based in London. It is because London has the weakest regulations protecting investors from securities fraud.

[shootemindehead]

Not in this country it wont, with the EU on the brink of collapse we're all going to be taking a bite of a huge shit sandwich which will last for decades, wonderful. Well, actually I wasn't thinking about the EU at all. It's the one way street that petrol is travelling down that's of more concern. It's cost, as it runs out is ONLY going to get worse and worse. 20 years from now, people won't believe the price of oil and driving will probably become a luxury passtime, or one of absolute controlled necessity. In 30 years, it'll be even worse.

[Andy]

our gas is high.....its easy to compare to somewhere else....but if i can remember 99 cent gas and that was fairly recently, then gas is way too fuckin high at almost 4 a gallon Someone correct me if im wrong. 1 gallon is roughly 4 litres, and your paying $4 dollars for that, so about $1 a litre, at the moment $1 = £0.63, so you americans are paying 60 pence a litre (almost) and complaining about it!! Do you understand how much we pay for fuel?.. Even at $4/Gallon your still not even paying half of what we pay.. If you were paying british prices over there, you would be paying about $8.22/gallon. You guys should be ecstatic your only paying what your paying..

[erisi236]

Yeah, you UK fellas just get raped for fuel almost totally by taxes. We'd both pay basically the same amount if not for that. Random note on that: You know despite the prices the US' biggest EXPORT last year was fuel. The Euro thing is funny tho', you look at the money markets and everyone over there who trades in currency is buying Dollars and Pounds hand over fist, they know the score.