08:03 – The EU must think everyone else is stupid. Fekter announced today that the EU is boosting its “firewall” to $1 trillion+. The problem is, that’s a complete lie. The EU hasn’t boosted anything. The size of the “firewall” hasn’t changed. What’s changed is that the EU is now using accounting smoke-and-mirrors to make its nominal €500 billion look like €800 billion. They even added in the €110 billion from the first Greek bailout. All this in an attempt to convince markets that a real firewall exists and, more importantly, to convince the IMF (read, the US) to contribute an additional $1 trillion to bailing out the euro. Fortunately, the G20 in general and the US in particular aren’t going to fall for this cynical attempt to shift EU debts onto other countries’ taxpayers. And the sad truth is that that “€500 billion” fund actually has maybe 1% of that amount available. The remainder is essentially IOUs, promises to pay by countries that, other than Germany and Finland, can’t pay their own bills. This will not end well.
Work on the forensics book continues, as does work on a new batch of chemistry kits.