Well yes, there has been a little turbulence in the markets the last couple of weeks and its not easy to cut through the pablum served up by the media to figure out what it all means to regular folks, let alone bee farmers. One good analysis is up at Firedoglake, don’t miss the comments, especially #84, #107 and # 113. There’s some static, it being the web after all, but there is also some good thinking here.

I was in the Yucatan during the currency crisis Mexicans called ‘el Crack’ in 1993. With an odd group of friends ( a Mexican charter boat captain, a German retiree, an itinerant Aussie barber and others ) we would gather on the beach in the late morning to discuss classical economics through the lens of the chaotic and opaque events in the Mexican market and try to figure out how to use the day to day fluctuations to our advantage in stretching our hard currency assets. Since we were all, to some extent, gabacheros ( seekers of babes ) this was a counter productive activity because there is nothing that will turn people ( let alone babes ) off so quickly as the dismal science. Still we found it strangely exciting to be in a ‘crisis’ and tried hard to understand what was going on. It all helped me when I was in the middle of a very similar event in Asia a few years later. You see one crack you’ve seen, er……

I think there’s a shoe or two still to drop in this one, especially with the administration hunkered down trying to run out the clock.

Update: There’s a much shorter but interesting discussion of this at the excellent John Quiggin’s blog: