Graphic: European Sovereign Debt Crisis - It's All Connected

This is a BIG graphic. The original NY Times version, which is easier to view, can be found here, with the interactive version here.

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Interactive Global Debt Clock

Courtesy of The Economist

The clock is ticking. Every second, it seems, someone in the world takes on more debt. The idea of a debt clock for an individual nation is familiar to anyone who has been to Times Square in New York, where the American public shortfall is revealed. Our clock shows the global figure for all (or almost all) government debts in dollar terms. 

Does it matter? After all, world governments owe the money to their own citizens, not to the Martians. But the rising total is important for two reasons. First, when debt rises faster than economic output (as it has been doing in recent years), higher government debt implies more state interference in the economy and higher taxes in the future. Second, debt must be rolled over at regular intervals. This creates a recurring popularity test for individual governments, rather as reality TV show contestants face a public phone vote every week. Fail that vote, as the Greek government did in early 2010, and the country can be plunged into imminent crisis. So the higher the global government debt total, the greater the risk of fiscal crisis, and the bigger the economic impact such crises will have.

h/t zerohedge

"Dexia Has a Problem of Liquidity, Not Solvency"

In a move eerily reminiscent of 2008 Belgium and France have agreed to bailout Dexia, with a French official apparently claiming that Dexia "has a problem of liquidity, not solvency".

Ok, so it looks like Bear Stearns would have made for a better metaphor than Lehman.

But now that it's been decided to backstop the Brussels-based megabank (again) Belgium's caretaker government might have to explain in the not too distant future whether the country itself is having a liquidity or solvency problem. Per the below chart Dexia's assets are almost 200% of Belgian GDP.

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(Note: the above chart from ZeroHedge does not appear to include France's GDP in the calculation of Dexia's ratio, just Belgium's. However, it does give a sense of just how big Dexia is relative to the size of Belgium's economy, along with other large banks in Europe.)

Is the Bernanke Put Kaput?

As Barry suggests, have we just seen the end of the Bernanke put? Based on the way markets are trading today it would appear Ken Rogoff was right that Bernanke doesn't have the stock market's back.

However, in all likelihood Soros is right about how policymaking powers-that-be will be forced to bailout Too Big To Fail banks should the financial system begin to teeter again. In which case the only real question is for how long can the current central bank shell-game be sustained in a low-to-no growth economic environment?

No one -- not Ben Bernanke, not Alan Greenspan, not Milton Friedman if he were alive, nobody -- knows for sure just how much more room the Fed's balance sheet has before non-negligible inflation kicks in. However, former Fed Chair Paul Volcker for one is starting to get nervous.

Federal Reserve Total Assets ($s Trillions)

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Continue reading the full article at SeekingAlpha here.

Graphic: Who Holds Sovereign Debt? 70% of U.S. Debt Held by Government Entities

Courtesy of Global Macro Monitor:

Here’s a great chart just released by the International Monetary Fund. Note that almost half — 47 percent – of the US$14.7 trillion U.S. federal government debt is held by the Federal Reserve and the government itself, such as the Social Security trust fund. Add to that the 22 percent foreign official holdings (mainly central banks) and almost 70 percent of the debt of the U.S. government is held by non-market/non-profit oriented public sector entities. Stunning! 

It’s also interesting to hear Europeans quote the $14.7 trillion (apx. 100% of GDP) figure while U.S. officials like to refer to marketable or debt held by the public, which totals US$10.1 trillion (apx. 75% of GDP).

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Worldwide Monthly Parking Rates

The City of London takes the cake. All figures are in U.S. dollars.

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h/t Paul Kedrosky

Chart of the Day: U.S. Debt Ceiling Over Last 30 Years

Chart of the Day: Generation U

Perhaps its time to rename Gen Y as Gen U, as in Generation Unemployed.

Not surprisingly, the PIIGS occupy five of the top seven spots in this primarily European country sample. Chronically unemployed young males are often a key ingredient in social unrest and revolution.

Source: The Economist

Rogoff: Germany Must Construct a 'Firewall' Around Spanish and Italian Debt

Full post here; graphic below of what Germany and the 'troika' can afford.

Timeline of International Currencies

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Graphic: Why Healthcare in America is so Expensive

For a quick chart-view on just how much more Americans pay for healthcare click here.


Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Timeline and Map of al-Qaeda Terrorist Attacks

From The Economist 

Updated: Seal Team Six Op Details

(New details and corrections continue to emerge which I'll be incorporating into this post as they come in; a strikethrough will indicate previously reported but now inaccurate information)

The operation was authorized Friday morning and the objective was to kill -- not capture -- Osama bin Laden.

Because the target was bin Laden the raid required practice. Earlier this year a one-acre replica of bin Laden's compound was created at Camp Alpha, which is a segregated section of Bagram Air Base, located in the Parwan province of Afghanistan. Dry-op runs were conducted in early April.

The president authorized this incredibly daring and difficult operation during a time of “low loom” – little moon luminosity – so that U.S. helicopters could travel to the target from Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan low to the ground and undetected.

It was originally planned for Saturday night but on Friday, for weather reasons, it was pushed to Sunday.

Two U.S. MH-60 Seahawk specially modified Blackhawk helicopters swept into the compound at 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. The ground team consisted of 25 U.S. Navy Seals and one specially trained and outfitted war dog from the elite Seal Team Six, based in Dam Neck in Virginia. The op was run under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and in cooperation with CIA.

Real Time: Team Obama watches the op live

After bursts of fire during a raid originally scheduled for under 30 minutes but lasting 38 minutes, 22 people were captured or killed by the 'DevGru' team.

The SEALs took fire on their way to the compound’s third floor, where bin Laden had been sleeping. The encounter with bin Laden lasted only seconds, and ended with a double tap -- boom, boom -- two shots, one to the chest and one to the left side of his face. Radioing a commander on Sunday, the team reported the capture with a pre-arranged signal: “Geronimo!”

Also among the dead were:

• One of bin Laden's sons named Khalid Hamza
• Two brothers (or possibly cousins), Afghan Pakistani Pashtuns from Charsa, who served as bin Laden's couriers named Arshad Khan and Tareq Khan (although one police official said that Arshad was not the man’s real name and that he carried a fake identity card)
• A yet to be identified woman who is a) not bin Laden's wife, and b) was not used as a human shield. 

At least one more women, purported to be bin Laden's youngest wife, was wounded as she charged the Seals. Bin Laden's 12-year old daughter is purported to have been in the bedroom, along with other children, and to have witnessed his death.

Other women and children, likely the families of the couriers, were present in the compound but were not killed. U.S. officials said that Bin Laden himself did fire a weapon during the fight.

One of the U.S. helicopters was damaged but not destroyed during the initial part of the operation, and U.S. forces elected to scuttle it with explosives. Video footage of a raging fire outside the walls of bin Laden's compound is purported to be the MH-60 Seahawk a classified, stealth outfitted Blackhawk helicopter that was scuttled.

The Raid: by the numbers

After the firefight American forces hauled Mr. Bin Laden’s body and a "mother load" of intel to a U.S. military base near Kabul, Afghanistan. There body photographed, presumably autopsied, but not in fact not incinerated.

The by now well travled Bin Laden corpose was next flown to the USS Carl Vinson. After a proper Islam burial ceremony conducted by a muslim member of the U.S. military the body was placed in a a weighted bag and cast overboard from the deck into the North Arabian Sea. The speedy, controversial disposal of the body was conducted inline with Islam custom to bury the dead within 24 hours.

While a video of the burial is expected to be release, the Obama administration is still debating whether to release photos of a deceased bin Laden due to their graphic nature ("skull was blown apart").

More backstory on Special Forces, the JSOC, etc. can be found here and in the below video on Seal Team Six.

Updated: Confirmed Map, Satellite Imagery, and CIA Diagram of Bin Laden's Compound in Abbottabad (Bilal Town), Pakistan

(Note: in the hours following confirmation of bin Laden's death various maps purporting the location of the bin Laden compound were circulated by the mainstream media. In the interest of maintaining the chronology of these releases, and to highlight some of the astute comments made on this post, I've kept the two inaccurate map sets in the order they were circulated. The final, accurate satellite image from 2010, along with the CIA diagram of the compound, can be found at the bottom of this post.)

Osama bin Laden was killed today (unconfirmed death photo here, WARNING: graphic) about 100 kilometers outside Pakistan's capital of Islamabad. The op was carried out by the Special Forces 'legendary' (in both the literal and figurative sense) Seal Team Six.

The Location

Bin Laden was located in the relatively posh part of Abbottabad, Pakistan called Bilal Town. The compound itself was located a short distance from the Pakistani military academy (the "West Point or Sandhurst of Pakistan" as it's being characterized).

The Compound

His five-to-six year old property, believed to have been purpose built to hide the ultimate 'High Value Target' (HVT), was three stories tall and approximately eight times larger than any other nearby dwelling. Other key details:

• 12-to-18-foot walls, topped with barbed wire
• Internal walls sectioned off different areas of the compound
• Access was restricted by two security gates
• Closed-circuit cameras positioned around the property
  

Yet bin Laden's "mansion", as it has been characterized, did not have a phone line or internet. The couriers, Afghans brothers named Arshad and Tariq who were also gunned down by ST6, did not report any income and had no visible source of wealth. They also burned all their own trash. Neighbors also reported that the women who were living inside the house spoke in Arabic and not the local dialect.

Assessing Bin Laden's Hideout Strategy & What Did Pakistan Know?

Bin Laden's choice to hide near Pakistani military installations and in a residential community of retired Pakistani officers strikes me as both intriguing and suspicious. Less wise, perhaps, were some of the activities noted above, like burning the trash and not having a phone or internet line.

In short, Bin Laden stopped just short of hiding in veritable plain view. Did his failure to go all the way here do him in? One thing we do know is that the U.S. was only able to locate bin Laden by trailing his courier back to the compound in August 2010, and the whole reason bin Laden had to employ the services of a courier was due to his aversion to phones and the internet.

This location at least gave bin Laden some chance as the first assassination option considered by President Obama, employing B-2 Stealth Bombers, was abandoned due in part to the likelihood of collateral damage.

Bin Laden apparently lived in this compound for the last 5-6 years. This raises very important questions about how much Pakistan, or elements of Pakistan's military and intelligence service, knew about the whereabouts of bin Laden. The U.S. has sent billions of dollars to Pakistan over the past several years to help find and kill people like bin Laden.

Was bin Laden's thinking on where to locate influenced by his correct calculation that the U.S. was unlikely to drop a bomb or conduct a Predator drone strike on this particular location? In turn, was bin Laden expecting a tip from Pakistani intelligence should any planned U.S. Special Forces assault to be attempted?

The Map, Satellite Imagery, & Compound Diagram

From the below maps, sourced from The Atlantic, you can see that it was located very close to a police station.

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And below is the pinned version marking bin Laden's compound (B) and the nearby police station (A).

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Update 1: As a commenter pointed out the exact location of the compound appears to be unclear. Here are the satellite imagery of the compound's surrounding area and closeup from the above Google maps sourced from The Atlantic.

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Update 2: Here's a second Google Map with corresponding satellite imagery of the compound, sourced from the Huffington Post. This location is in nearby Bilal Town, a newer development a couple miles from Abbottabad:

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Update 3: As an astute commenter pointed out, based on an evaluation of these compound photos (which include a daylight image of the scuttled MH-60 Seahawk Helicopter; nighttime footage of the burning wreck here) these previously reported locations are not correct.

Below are the maps for the now CIA confirmed location of bin Laden's compound:

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The following two satellite images appear to be circa 2004-2005.

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This satellite shot is from 2010 and shows some of the other dwellings that sprouted up around bin Laden since 2004-2005 that are clearly visible in recent compound photos.

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And here is the diagram, complete with dimensions and other pertinent op information, that the CIA just released of the actual compound.

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Chart of the Month: Healthcare Bang (or lackthereof) for the Buck

This one is so outrageous that it deserves more heft than the usual Chart of the Day, or Week title.

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In fact I almost dubbed it Chart of the Year, but to be prudent I wanted to to wait a little a longer to see how this chart plays out.

Education Site: Those interested in careers in healthcare and healthcare reform, might be interested in Guide to Online Schools degree and certificate programs in the medical field.

Chart of the Day - Why Might NATO Intervene in Libya?

Is the reason NATO's heartfelt concern over the rising Libyan death toll? 

Courtesy of CNN, that appears to be the television sound bite to be dished out by NATO member politicians. Here's Simon Henderson (a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) on the rationale for NATO intervention in Libya:

"What's an acceptable number of civilian deaths? I don't know. Choose your figure," Henderson said. "At the very least, instead of having a casualty list certainly in the hundreds, possibly in the thousands, we don't want a casualty list numbering in the tens of thousands, or 100,000 or so."

With all due respect, Simon, here's a figure for you: not-so-long ago NATO couldn't be bothered to lift a finger when approximately one million people were slaughtered in nearby Rwanda.

The below chart illustrates the real reason Libya's civil war matters more to the NATO powers that be than nearby Rwanda's:

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Source: Economist

Graphic of the Day: The Financial Crisis of 2015

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Source: Oliver Wyman

The 'Shoe Thrower's Index': Middle-East Interactive Country Profiles

Click here to toggle the BBC's profiles and data on the Middle Eastern countries currently experiencing unrest.

Based on the below 'Shoe Thrower's Index' Yemen takes the cake at 87% (100% = most unstable).

Source: The Economist

Graphic of the Day: The U.S. Fiscal Crisis

Accompanying article at the FT.

Graphic: Timeline Tracking the Global Recession (with British emphasis)

Description from Money.co.uk:

The worst economic crisis in decades played out like a soap opera of epic proportions – the bad guys were vilified, speculation ran wild and drama unfolded on an almost daily basis.

We’ve tracked the credit crunch in the UK and beyond, from the very first rumblings of trouble to the official end point, and present it here in what may be the most detailed timeline of the recession online.

By using the links alongside each headline, you can find more detail about that particular event – however, rather than use traditional news sources, we’ve linked to quality blogs that reported on the news as it broke in an effort to accurately reflect the sentiments at ground level.

Needless to say, money.co.uk is not responsible for the quality of outside content, nor are we affiliated with any of the opinions expressed therein. That said, it is interesting to note how accurate many of the predictions made by the bloggers below came to be.