Well, at this point things are getting as bad as I figured they would.  The Lehman brothers are going bankrupt, and Merryl Lynch is being sold to prevent the same from happening to them.  The USD is at 1.1 CHF.  About a year ago I warned my relatives they should put some money in other currencies, since I figured the USD would tank to about even with the CHF when the sub-prime crisis finally hit.  I don’t think anyone listened to me, but at least I tried.    I remember telling Herta I estimated it as about 50% probable that the USD would hit about even with USD sometime in the next two years, and I figured about a 5% chance that it would hit a real crisis, like 0.2 USD to the CHF.

Well, my 50% probably hit right in the middle of the time interval I gave (back in May).  It’s crawled back up to 1.1, but now with the latest wave in the crisis, I’m thinking it’ll go down again.  Selfishly speaking, I hope it tanks quickly over the next week, so my money is worth more when I travel to the States.  And of course, it makes my student loans cheaper.

But the Lehman brothers going under is pretty scary.  This summer I was working for an investment compan in Zug (one floor below the Mark Rich group).  The lead investor was telling us the investment infrastructure was provided by said Lehman brothers.  Already then there was quite a bit of discussion about their troubles in the financial mags.  Someone asked if the company was concerned about the Lehmann brothers troubles.  The lead investor made the comment that “well, if the Lehman brothers go under we have a lot bigger problems than just losing our infrastructure” -> referring to the overall infrastructure collapse that would be caused by such an event.  That will now happen.

On the comforting side, the government is at least stepping in to regulate the collapse, to try and mitigate the repercussions.  Let’s hope it works.   And lets hope we can get the Republicans away from the controls come November.