Sam Zell, a real estate billionaire, compares Rome’s failure to America’s pending demise:

“How did Rome fall?” Zell asked. Rome fell because people agitated for “more entitlements, more entitlements, more entitlements, until there was no more Rome,” he said. – CNBC

In California, which has a significant debt crises, Arnold Schwarzenegger recently asked for a wage reduction and there is, understandably significant resistance .

Humans, while we learn over time, and there is an “invisible hand” that adjusts inefficiencies to equilibrium. In the progress, to make an omelette, eggs need to be cracked. Sometimes the cracking is significantly more harmful.

As predicted by other experts, the biggest bailouts are yet to come in the CDO market. After studying this challenge for a while, I’ve learned that the point of least resistance is the one where the pressure goes. ?Currently, the risk has been shifted multiple times. Inexpensive debt combined with levering on weak asset classes will inevitably cause nations to fail. ? A few large funds already placed bets have been placed on a few weak European nations.