Yes it is, sadly. But war is the most utter failure of the imagination. It is too easy and too tragic to do nothing until war is the only option left. Tyranny comes in many forms and many are the ways it can be fought.

Speaking out radically may seem irrelevant, but I do not believe it is. I believe history shows rather clearly, that radical thought liberates shackled minds and those minds unshackled are the pre-requisite for any real revolution.

Just my opinion.

Keep commenting.

Almost like Europeans fighting in Afghanistan for US' imagined interests there. At least as hard to justify in European parliaments.

This time around, not only risking young peoples' lives, but pensions and economies of deserving senior citizens, maybe not…

The slide in Euro against the dollar since Monday, we are back at levels lower than before that famous last weekend telephone "conferences", seems to cast doubt on the fund's reality, in my opinion.

It's not a done deal – yet. I think we're in for stunning developments in the saga about where all that debt will finally be absorbed and the value of the collateral realised, the "troubled" assets' final re-pricing.

Had either fallen over, AIG and I think also the others also, would NOT have been able to cover their obligations. That would, in the case of AIG at least, have left the US taxpayer on the hook to pay.

First that would have created a back-lash and second would have wounded the US credit rating.

There are of course more involved rumours and one can start to imagine the follow-on from AIG or a bank or two going under. BUt just the basic rumour, which I think is very likely to has substance, is enough.

President Obama might well have noted that the FED funnelled money to European banks to make good on AIG dents and now expected the Europeans to return the favour.

In a limited sense of course you can se some sort of justice in the argument. But on a broader scale is doesn't work for me. If AIG was going to have more of its stupid contracts blow up I see that as AIG's problem and those moronic enough to be bailing it out. That others should be lent on to join the festival of stupidity is, in my opinion, wrong.

If there were swaps European banks were going to default on that too is not something we should have bailed out. Just because the US chose that policy response does not mean Europe should have to. But we did.

If our leader chose freely to do so, then they are as stupid as the Americans. If our leaders allowed themselves to be bullied into it then they are cowards and traitors. Either way, to my way of seeing things, they failed their nations and their people.

It's almost as if the politicians defy its people to rise or have their parliaments vote down the bail-out fund (we tried, but our people would not have it).

It has been suggested (New York Times) that President Obama was very insistent on this shock and awe fund idea in telephone calls to Merkel and Sarkozy last week-end. In return the FED(?) would change dollars for Euro. Any ideas as to why the US took such a strong interest?

And during the night before Monday morning, the ECB board members were heavily leaned on to begin buying sub-prime sovereign debt, which was then decided in a hasty telephone conference and implemented immediately.

Urgency, almost panic must have reigned. What was it? The near dry-up of interbank lending as banks contemplated possible bust of their counterpart?