Panic has gripped stock markets worldwide over the Greek debt crisis and the threat of a debt-deflation contagion through banks in Europe (primarily) and the U.S. that own the bonds of Greece, Portugal, Spain, and so forth. If these bond asset prices collapse totally, lending facilities would be badly crimped for both the short and long term. And that, in turn, would damage prospects for economic recovery.

The Dow closed yesterday off nearly 350 points. Earlier in the day the Dow was down 850 points, though there is talk of computer glitches and technical problems that may have temporarily undermined trading. Either way, the market is getting creamed as a result of the Greek story.

The real winner? Gold. It’s up about $25, to $1,200. People want real money. They do not trust the debt-laden currencies of Europe and the United States. Or for that matter Japan. Gold is fast becoming, once again, a reserve currency of choice.

Meanwhile, the EU/IMF bailout package for Greece, which does include draconian budget cuts, contains a 2 percentage point increase in the VAT tax that is anti-growth. Steve Forbes correctly said Wednesday on CNBC that the Greeks should be slashing spending and should move to a flat tax, just like the countries in Eastern Europe. I gave him a Nobel Prize for that.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is up for Senate confirmation for another term. It isn’t going well.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee wanted to let everyone know that they really like Barack Obama. They approve of his political views and they want him to remake the world according to his vision.  Okay, we get it.  The Norwegians, one of the most homogeneous societies in the world, whose sole significant imprint on the world stage is the annual awarding of this increasingly worthless prize, arrogantly assume the role of moral arbiters of United States politics.  Thanks.  Appreciate it. 

It is blatantly absurd to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a nine-month president with absolutely no foreign policy achievement of note.  Especially when there are so many other fields where the Academy could justify lavishing glory, (and money–one wonders what POTUS will do with the cash?) on their secular savior. 

 President Obama has written two highly acclaimed (by the left) books.  Dreams from My Father is his accounting of his unique life story and his journey to understand his roots and his father’s abandonment of him and his mother.  It was called, “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” by fawning sychophant Joe Klein.

 His second book, The Audacity of Hope (the first campaign flier published by Crown) was his soaring vision of a nation and world guided by the kind of social justice that only a community organizer can envision.  No less a literary critic than Gary Hart called Obama a, “figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur.”  The book occupied the New York Times Bestseller List for thirty weeks and won a Grammy to boot.

Almost any writer would kill to have sold as many volumes and have his or her books become so influential.  Surely the Nobel Prize for literature would have been much more justifiable.

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