I was just reading about how Russia lent 4 billion euros to Iceland to shore up its financial system. I was very surprised that the EU or USA had not helped out. The Iceland bailout may be the beginning of bailouts of small countries by larger countries. A global financial crisis, such as the one we are going through right now, shows the benefits of being part of a larger country or belonging to a country association such as the EU. The little country that must be most worried now is Switzerland. With its federal system, how are the small cantons going to be able to help out if one of the Swiss giants needs $100?

What the world now needs is a well functioning global financial institution. An IMF that is not neoliberal but who understands that what works around the world is sociocapitalism not pure capitalism and stands ready to help.

Update: Since I wrote this article I see that something close to what I was proposing is happening.

US please tell every bank depositor that all their savings in US banks regardless of the amount, are insured by the FDIC. Not doing this is creating silent runs on banks. Especially from big customers who can go outside USA. Moreover it is making people move away from banks as depositors to banks as custodians and shifting from deposits to bonds. That´s what I did with all my liquid funds and it only hurts the system. If USA guarantees depositors then people will stop running from bank to bank or leave their funds as deposits and banks will not go bust. More important they will go on lending. And then they will focus on rebuilding the asset side of their balance sheet (which is for all of us, our liabilities).

A year ago my friend Loic Le Meur already had 5000 friends in Facebook and was complaining that he maxed out. Indeed at the Monaco Media Forum he asked Owen who since then left Facebook why wasn´t he able to export his friends into another more “friendly” platform. At that time I considered Loic´s complaints absurd but now I am realizing that there was something to what he was saying. My efforts to filter people in Facebook are failing miserably. First I only accepted people I knew. Then I started accepting people I did not know but with whom I had many friends in common and in this way I got to hundreds of friends. Then a waiting list started accumulating of people wanting to be my friends and yesterday I declared Facebook bankruptcy and accepted everyone who was on that list and got to 1220 friends. But in a few hours I had many more requests. I guess for a blogger Facebook is another self expression platform like Twitter and less a friendship management tool. For many the only difference is that Facebook has helped move the personal stuff away from the work email platform. You manage your work in your x.com account and your private life in Facebook that is like a complex email with all sort of messaging choices. But as I meet with Mark Zuckerberg next Monday for the Madrid Facebook Developer garage that I am hosting for him I plan to bring this up. I know he and the other Facebook managers know FB better than all of us put together but what I am beginning to miss in Facebook is better search. Facebook now for me is like a conference. It´s fun but I want to know where my close friends are and hang out with them. I want more signal and less noise. Facebook tries to give me less noise. But it should try harder.

Considering how the markets are moving today I think it´s time Forbes puts all the net worth data that they have on the richest people in the world and create the moving Forbes 400. I just read that Carlos Slim is down $34bn. There´s probably a lot of other movements around the list. While the accumulated wealth of the wealthiest people in the world is down a lot the relative positions in the list must be changing by the hour. The moving Forbes 400 would be accurate on all the publicly traded securities the richest people have and only a guess on their private stock and real estate, but it would still be a good indication. Other than the cruelty value of the average person that watches that insofar as they still have their job their own net worth is much less volatile than that of the very wealthy I believe this chart would have academic value as it would be a quick look at how all the sectors of the global economy are doing vis a vis each other. As I write this I can imagine that members of the list who have cashed out and gone liquid are rapidly gaining positions over those who are still in the game.

Nouriel Roubini is an academic at New York University, but he is also in the business of doom. Roubini was mostly unknown until he became a star in the States for predicting the current mess we are in. Now, as many others sink, he is world famous and making more money than ever. Not a day goes by without some friend of mine who runs a top bank or top hedge fund sending me another Roubini article about how everyone in Wall Street and in government is an idiot and he is so smart and proves us all wrong.

But while I believe that Nouriel Roubini has been proven right til now as stocks and the economy sink, I also think that when stocks turn around, and turn around they will, it won’t be Nouriel Roubini who will be the one who will let you know. All good things come to an end, but so do bad things. In my view, those who go long next week and stop looking at their portfolio for the next few months until the new administration is in place, will not be sorry they bought two years from now. That’s what I will do at least.

I had been out of stocks for 5 years. I started buying some this summer as I said in this blog. I now have 5% of my net worth in stocks. I will increase that. I dont know what the bottom will be. But if we are not there now we will soon be and as a non trader, but a person who rides long trends, I know I will never get it just right.

What would I buy? Big banks (yes big banks like C, BAC, JPM that are trading at near death), big tech companies like AAPL and Nokia, alternative energy companies like Iberdrola Renovables, big Chinese stocks, some stocks from my native Argentina like TEO (now so depressed). In short a collection of 30 global stocks which are now down 50% or more, but have a bright future after this recession.

I just found this video ap palin g.

September sales at Ford are down 34% and the industry as a whole is down an incredible 26%. Interestingly luxury cars are being hurt the most with Porsche sales down 45%. Layoffs will be massive. What I wonder here is the chicken and egg question. Did sales collapse because people have no money or because they have no credit? Because so far sales of things that people normally don´t buy on credit are not down nearly as much.

Image via CrunchBase

This October 13th at 7pm Fon will host the second Developer Garage for Facebook. We were happy to see that the first one was such a big success that the folks at Facebook wanted an encore. The two major differences since February are that Facebook did not exist in Spanish until that Developer´s Garage and that Mark Zuckerberg was not there (although Javier Olivan did a great job explaining Facebook apps to all of us). But this time developers joining us at the Teatro Lara of Madrid will get a chance to hear Facebook´s founder present his own vision of the role that Facebook apps play in Facebook. To attend this garage(theater) please reserve here.