OECD warns on global imbalances (BBC)

By Steve Schifferes
BBC News economics reporter at the OECD in Paris

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has warned that the global imbalances in world trade are unsustainable and must be tackled.
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{Greek finance minister George Alogoskoufis} told reporters that although it was too early to talk of a "crisis" in the markets, recent falls in global stock and currency markets could be the beginning of a "correction" based on uncertainty about the future direction of interest rates.

And in a barely veiled criticism of the United States he called for greater international economic policy coordination to prevent large countries abusing their position and practicing "beggar-my-neighbour policies".
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"The large extent of deficits of some countries, combined with the surpluses of their trading partners and the oil-producing countries, can pose considerable risks to global economic stability, so it is crucial that we do something about them," Mr Alogoskoufis said.

Some of these imbalances "are clearly not sustainable and will have to be addressed in an effective manner as soon as possible," he added.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5004948.stm

Guys ... they're talking about us. Didn't we put the "party of fiscal responsibility" in charge of our finances? And didn't Diebold throw them out of office against our wishes? Look what's happening as a result.

I just got done reading Reid's "The United States of Europe", and am realizing for the first time just how much of a corner the US may have painted itself into re the relative strengths of the US$ and the Euro. If anyone can give me a hint how to invest in euros, I'd appreciate it. (Oh, and what's HTML for the euro symbol? I just realized I haven't seen my HTML bible lately.)

The offshoring, trade-imbalance assisting freak converted to the Euro in January 2005 and told everyone "The ol' dollar, it's gonna go down.".

Evidently I have to change the text encoding, which is something I've never gotten into. Looks like OSX will let me set my keyboard to Cherokee (2 variations) or Inuktitut (4 variations), but there's no 'European'; I have to pick a country, and British does not automatically give me the euro symbol!

€ just chechking!

From a page when the euro was being introduced:

€ see?

(I've been very, very slow to migrate to OSX. Fact is, I just like the Classic OS better.)