09:27 – The biology book is complete and off to the MAKE production crew. We’re finished with it, other than a QC pass or two, where we’ll do a quick check of the PDFs before the book actually goes to the printer. Amazon says the book will be available on 22 April, and I suspect that’s pretty accurate.
I’m off now to finish putting together purchase orders for the biology kits and more chemistry kits. Once I get those issued, it’ll be back to work on the forensics book re-write.
I see that there are Greek riots scheduled for today. Merkel cut Greece loose months ago, and it’s finally coming home to roost. As I predicted months ago, that 30% “haircut” for Greek bondholders turned into 50% and now appears likely to reach 80%, nominally. In fact, as I said, it’s actually going to be a 100% writedown, as Greece rapidly heads toward complete bankruptcy, with Portugal not far behind and Spain and Italy in the on-deck circle. The dominoes are starting to topple.
The fallout from the collapse of the euro isn’t likely to affect the US as deeply as some people seem to fear. US banks have very limited exposure to European debt, and exports to Europe are a fairly minor part of overall US production. Although clearly the exposure varies from state to state, on average US states probably do less than 2% of their business with Europe. Even if that disappears entirely, which it obviously won’t, the impact on US businesses will be relatively minor. The same can’t be said for China, however. China, which is leveraged out the wazoo, exports a large percentage of its overall production to Europe, and that export business is declining fast. That loss is already approaching levels that are catastrophic for China, and it looks like it can only get worse. Expect to see Chinese goods get cheaper as China tries desperately to keep exports up by increasing volumes to the US.