He's one of the most fascinating figures in the world of international terrorism, a criminal mastermind linked to everyone from al Qaeda to Bollywood starlets to East African drug cartels. Few in the West have heard of him, though he is practically a household name in South Asia.

And now, India is connecting him to last week's attacks in Mumbai.

The Indian government has asked Pakistan to extradite exiled Indian gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who has long been accused of arranging the 1993 bombing attacks in Mumbai. The extradition request is not a new one, and Pakistan has always denied harboring Ibrahim. But now is probably as good a time as any for Indian officials to give it another try -- whether he was involved in the latest carnage in Mumbai or not.

There is precious little reliable information in the public domain on Ibrahim. Some of what we do know comes from the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which designated him a "global terrorist" in 2003.

He was born in India -- ironically, as the son of a police constable. His early history is sketchy, but what is known is that he worked his way up to become a top figure in the Mumbai underworld. Indian officals say he fled his homeland for Dubai, fearing prosecution, though different accounts give different dates for this change of address.

OFAC describes Ibrahim in its listing as "an Indian crime lord" who "has found common cause with Al Qaida, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indian government." He is "known to have financed the activities" of Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to the listing.

That all seems fairly solid. For sheer entertainment value, though, it's hard to beat this 2001 profile by Pakistani journalist Ghulam Hasnain. The lurid details of the story seem too vivid to possibly be true:

Ibrahim lives like a king. Home is a palatial house spread over 6,000 square yds, boasting a pool, tennis courts, snooker room and a private, hi-tech gym. He wears designer clothes, drives top of the line Mercedes’ and luxurious four-wheel drives, sports a half-a-million rupee Patek Phillipe wristwatch, and showers money on starlets and prostitutes. He bought Lahore model, Saba, with whom he reportedly had a passionate involvement, a house and a car. Nor does he shirk his obligations: Mandakini, of Ram Teri Ganga Maili fame, former Bollywood actress with whom he had a child is reportedly still being supported by him.

His daily regimen is also rather kingly. He wakes in the afternoon. After a swim and shower, he has breakfast. In the late afternoon, he gives his employees an audience where he briefs them on their assignments and they give him daily reports of his myriad businesses.

If in the mood, he engages in a game of cricket or snooker with friends. And as the sun sets, Dawood and his party set off for any one of his 'safe houses' in Karachi for an evening of revelry – usually comprising drinks (Black Label is his preference), mujras and gambling. The long-married Dawood’s passion for women has made him a favoured client for local pimps. His current liaison notwithstanding, he whets his allegedly large sexual appetite with a variety of women.

"He prefers virgins, preferably young girls. And he is a good paymaster. If the market rate for a woman is 10,000 rupees, Dawood pays 100,000 rupees. He is thus always surrounded by Pakistan’s top call girls," discloses one of his family friends.

The most incendiary claim in the article? Hasnain says Dawood is "Pakistan’s number one espionage operative." Indian officials may believe that, but I have yet to see solid, independent evidence. Some have speculated that the piece caused Hasnain's four-day abduction, after which he returned "a broken man" and recanted the article.

How could investors possibly be surprised that the U.S. economy is in recession? This is animal spirits in action, folks:

Investors were in full retreat yesterday, sending stocks tumbling after a panel of economists confirmed that the country has been in a recession for about a year.

The markets traded in negative territory all day as investors sold off shares to lock in profits after last week's rally. But the losses accelerated after the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit group, said a recession began in December 2007.

Amid a slew of piracy stories from Somalia, a fake Bloomberg piece is circulating the 'net today with a report that Wall Street bankers might cringe upon reading:

Somali Pirates in Discussions to Acquire Citigroup

By Andreas Hippin

November 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Somali pirates, renegade Somalis known for hijacking ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, are negotiating a purchase of Citigroup.

The pirates would buy Citigroup with new debt and their existing cash stockpiles, earned most recently from hijacking numerous ships, including most recently a $200 million Saudi Arabian oil tanker. The Somali pirates are offering up to $0.10 per share for Citigroup, pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said earlier today. The negotiations have entered the final stage, Ali said. 

"You may not like our price, but we are not in the business of paying for things. Be happy we are in the mood to
offer the shareholders anything," said Ali.

The pirates will finance part of the purchase by selling new Pirate Ransom Backed Securities.  The PRBS's are backed by the cash flows from future ransom payments from hijackings in the Gulf of Aden.  Moody's and S&P have already issued their top investment grade ratings for the PRBS's.

Head pirate, Ubu Kalid Shandu, said: "We need a bank so that we have a place to keep all of our ransom money. Thankfully, the dislocations in the capital markets has allowed us to purchase Citigroup
at an attractive valuation and to take advantage of TARP capital to grow the business even faster."

Shandu added, "We don't call ourselves pirates. We are coastguards and this will just allow us to guard our coasts better."

In real pirate news, the Weekly Piracy Report counted 11 incidents last week. And James Carrol debunks the lessons of piracy in the International Herald Tribune.

(Hat tip: Andrew Willis)

The Wall Street Journal has a banner reporting that Tim Geithner will be Barack Obama's Treasury Secretary. And CNN says, "Wall Street rallies on reports that Obama will tap NY Fed President Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Dow jumps 260 points."

I'll update as the news comes in.

Jonathan Weisman:

New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy J. Geithner is to be nominated as President-elect Barack Obama's Treasury secretary, according to a person close to the transition process.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began calling Geithner confidants this week, starting a vetting process of getting the economist and Fed veteran in place almost as soon as Mr. Obama is inaugurated the 44th president.

Mr. Obama plans to introduce his entire economic team early next week, hoping to sooth the roiling financial markets and answer rising pressure on the president-elect to become more involved.

Here's more from the WSJ:

• Who is Timothy Geithner?
• Will Geithner at Treasury Keep Fighting For the Fed?
• Geithner at Treasury? A Look Back in His Own Words

Here's why you shouldn't try to use political events to explain random walks on Wall Street.

Exhibit A, James Surowiecki last night:

One interesting variable to consider in thinking about how the stock market might react tomorrow to tonight's election results is the possible reaction of foreign stock markets, which as we know have lately often had a powerful influence on how the U.S. market opens. At the moment, the Australian and Japanese markets are up sharply, presumably as a result of today's U.S. rally. But one could easily imagine that rally being extended—and, even more important, one could easily imagine European markets rising sharply—if Obama were to win, since it seems clear that he's the preferred candidate of most of the world. And that, in turn, could help the U.S. rally keep going. In fact, I think it's possible that an Obama election could have a longer-term impact in boosting global markets' confidence in the U.S., even if it's also possible that American investors would be happier with McCain. So it’ll be worth paying attention to what Asia and Europe do tonight once we have a clear sense of the winner will be.

Exhibit B, major world stock indices as of 12:08 p.m. ET:

There's a surge going on in Iraq, but this one doesn't involve troops. The Iraq Stock Exchange (ISX) is not only remaining healthy amid the global financial crisis, but its index has been surging in value. The ISX index has risen 44 percent this year, from 34.59 points at the end of December 2007 to 49.873 today. One reason: The tiny stock exchange is disconnected from the global financial network.

The ISX is also quite low tech. The photo shows Iraqi traders updating share prices on a white board at the ISX in Baghdad on Oct. 30.

Forget the slopes of Vermont this winter. How about the French Alps? As the economic outlook in Europe continues to dim, the euro has experienced a steep selloff. Its value has slid more than 12 percent in the last month alone, placing it at a relatively affordable $1.26 as of today. Just a few months ago, the price was closer to $1.60/euro.

On the flip side is a strengthening dollar. Oh wherefore, you ask. Who would put their money in the United States? Didn't the Americans get us into this economic mess in the first place? And their financial system is still bleeding money, after all. True, but as The Economist points out: 

These reasons not to like the dollar are trumped by its enduring appeal as the world's reserve currency. Jittery investors want to be able to turn their assets to cash quickly and America’s bond markets are the most liquid in the world.

And there's an added advantage:

It's easier to acquire dollar funding, which can be swapped into the desired currency of choice rather than source a willing lender of that currency in the first place," writes Andrew Wilkinson, senior market analyst at Interactive [Brokers].

So whether investors want to hoard U.S. Treasurys like an acorn stash for tough times or ultimately deploy the money elsewhere, U.S. dollars have seemed like a good way to go. As a result, T-bill prices have shot up, driving yields down.

Maybe Jay-Z's euro-fab predictions were a little premature? At the same time, many cheeky bloggers out there have recently pointed out that insurance premiums on U.S. government debt have been higher than premiums on McDonald's debt. Translation: McDonalds is more credit-worthy than the United States? Probably not. Just another quirk of the markets, thanks to speculators. To be safe though, let's all grab a Royal with Cheese and spend our bucks on newly cheap European ski weekends. Who's with me?

Photo: FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images

NYU economist Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini was featured on National Public Radio this morning, in a Tom Gjelten story about whether globalization will help ease the financial crisis:

Six months ago, it appeared that the subprime mortgage crisis meant the United States was in for a period of economic distress. But at least one economist — Nouriel Roubini — was already on the record predicting that the crisis would be international. His article "The Coming Financial Pandemic" was on the cover of the March issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

Speaking at Columbia University this week, Roubini said the economic data eventually showed he was right. "The numbers from the second quarter of this year," he said, "suggested that not only the U.S. was entering a recession but also the U.K. was entering a recession, the rest of Europe was entering a recession, Japan was beginning to have an economic contraction, Canada was starting to have a recession."

Since then, it has only gotten worse, said Roubini, chairman of RGE Monitor, a strategic analysis firm.

"People usually say, when the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches the cold," he noted. "This time around, the U.S. is not just going to sneeze; it's going to have a severe case of pneumonia, or something more severe than that, and therefore the transmission to other countries is going to be also very, very severe."

I've made Roubini's cover story free in case any NPR listeners or Passport readers out there want to read it. I'm not sure "enjoy" is the proper term to use here, so I'll just say that I hope you find it informative.

Just about four minutes after the opening bell, the Dow Jones industrial average has already dropped more than 400 points. Unless big institutional investors step in, it's going to be an ugly day on Wall Street.

UPDATE: Down 312 points for the day. It could have been much worse.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted today that he is not, in fact, infallible.

Asked at a congressional hearing if the financial crisis had led him to discover any flaws in his free-market thinking, Greenspan confessed to being "partially" wrong about regulating derivatives. He added: 

We cannot expect perfection in any area where forecasting is required... We have to do our best but not expect infallibility or omniscience.''

For what it's worth, if you were reading Foreign Policy in January 2005 or even as recently as April 2008, you already knew that Greenspan was not all that.

Photo: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images

Is this what we really need right now? The world economy fell off the fence, and just as finance ministers, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) start trying to put it back together again... a sex scandal threatens to debilitate the managing director of the IMF.

Late last week, the Wall Street Journal began looking into an affair that has rocked the (usually dry) halls of one of the world's most important financial institutions. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is being accused of abusing his power as director of the fund in a sexual relationship with colleague Piroska Nagy, the wife of a former Argentinian central banker, Mario Blejer. According to Bloomberg news, an official IMF inquiry "will seek to determine whether the relationship involved any conflict of interest, harassment or favoritism."

Strauss-Kahn denies misusing his position. His wife, Anne Sinclair, writes on her blog, "Everyone knows these are things that can happen in the lives of any couple. To me, this one-night stand is behind us. We have turned the page" (my translation from the French).

Unfortunately for Ms. Sinclair, journalists around the world are just starting to write the page.

That's particularly true in France, where some commentators have worried that the public disclosure of the IMF's investigation is a move to discredit French-led efforts to stem the financial crisis. President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be among the angry, irked that his frantic efforts to organize an economic rescue might be discredited. 

Quel dommage! At least among some French commentators, the mood is forgiving. Asked by Le Figaro newspaper if such an affair would produce a media scandal in France, Christophe Deloire (author of Sexus Politicus) responded (my translation): 

Certainly not. There are things that one can do in Paris but not in Washington... in France, such an affair... would never have seen the light of day...

I hope that the purely private affaire will not become an incident for Dominique Strauss-Kahn... [Politicians] always feel obligated to make the public believe that they have a stable private life... the last presidential compaign is a very good example: the difficulties between the couple of Nicolas Sarkozy on the one hand and Ségolène Royal on the other hand stayed secret. It wasn't until after the scrutiny that the two couples separated..."

The greatest sin, it seems, wasn't the affair, but the fact that Strauss-Kahn got caught, and French credibility will go down in the fallout. Alors, c'est la vie!

Here's a must-read exit letter from Andrew Lahde, a hedge-fund manager who earned an 866 percent return last year by betting on a subprime mortgage collapse. Enjoy:

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, "What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it." I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

There are far too many people for me to sincerely thank for my success. However, I do not want to sound like a Hollywood actor accepting an award. The money was reward enough. Furthermore, the endless list those deserving thanks know who they are.

I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.

So this is it. With all due respect, I am dropping out. Please do not expect any type of reply to emails or voicemails within normal time frames or at all. Andy Springer and his company will be handling the dissolution of the fund. And don't worry about my employees, they were always employed by Mr. Springer's company and only one (who has been well-rewarded) will lose his job.

I have no interest in any deals in which anyone would like me to participate. I truly do not have a strong opinion about any market right now, other than to say that things will continue to get worse for some time, probably years. I am content sitting on the sidelines and waiting. After all, sitting and waiting is how we made money from the subprime debacle. I now have time to repair my health, which was destroyed by the stress I layered onto myself over the past two years, as well as my entire life -- where I had to compete for spaces in universities and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management -- with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not. May meritocracy be part of a new form of government, which needs to be established.

On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government.

Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man's interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft's near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.

Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won't see it included in BP's, "Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions," television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM's similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term. The original American flag was made of hemp fiber and our Constitution was printed on paper made of hemp. It was used as recently as World War II by the U.S. Government, and then promptly made illegal after the war was won. At a time when rhetoric is flying about becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy, why is it illegal to grow this plant in this country?

Ah, the female. The evil female plant -- marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country. My only conclusion as to why it is illegal, is that Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other additive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers. This policy is ludicrous. It has surely contributed to our dependency on foreign energy sources. Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week. Please people, let's stop the rhetoric and start thinking about how we can truly become self-sufficient.

With that I say good-bye and good luck.

All the best,
Andrew Lahde

(Hat tip: FT.com)

One interesting consequence of the U.K.'s massive bank bailouts is that the British government is now the largest stakeholder in Scotland's two largest banks. Scottish nationalists are none too pleased about this, and their opponents are relishing the opportunity to rub it in their faces:

They now look pretty silly," Brian Wilson, a Scot and former Labor Party member of Parliament, said of independence campaigners. "In the long term, when a mature judgment has to be made about independence, this episode will be remembered."

Independence from the United Kingdom is the driving force behind the political party currently in power in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, or SNP. Polls show that perhaps 25 to 30 percent of Scots support the idea.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a native Scot but an outspoken advocate of keeping Scotland in the U.K. fold, seemed to go out of his way Tuesday to tweak advocates of independence, especially the SNP [...]

"We were able to act decisively with 37 billion pounds; that would not have been possible for a Scottish administration," said Brown, whose own political fortunes have been boosted by his handling of the crisis.

The fact that the SNP's Web site offered up now-bankrupt Iceland as a model of prosperity is also a bit embarassing.

(Hat tip: Marginal Revolution)

DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images

Is it just me, or does French President Nicolas Sarkozy sound a little like Gollum in this quote about a planned summit to restructure the world's financial architecture?

Europe wants the summit before the end of the year... Europe wants it. Europe demands it. Europe will get it."

We wants it! In all seriousness, smart people have been saying for a long time -- way before the current mess -- that the framework put in place at Bretton Woods in 1944 is woefully obsolete.

But I'm not sure that Sarko, an old-school economic nationalist in liberal clothing, is the guy I'd want leading the charge. And how much confidence would Americans have in any decisions George W. Bush makes at this point? My take: it would be better to leave any grand, sweeping changes to No. 44.

JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images

FP's Elizabeth Dickinson spoke with economist Jeffrey Sachs this week about how the financial crisis will affect the world's poorest.

Surprisingly, Sachs doesn't think the mayhem on Wall Street necessarily spells doom for people living in low-income countries. It's middle-income countries, which are more connected to the global economy, that are most at risk.

His biggest worry? That the credit crunch will distract leaders from the "life-or-death" issues that affect the poor on a daily basis.

Check it out.

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

As I sip my coffee this morning, the Financial Times has given me new reason to appreciate my Robusta roast. Stung by the falling price of coffee, exporters -- particularly Southeast Asian exporters like Vietnam and Indonesia -- have started hoarding their stocks. Other big exporters, such as Colombia and Brazil, also look worried.

The coffee industry took a quick and nasty turn when markets fell last month and credit froze up. Traders found it harder to get credit to buy supplies, so demand -- and prices -- plummeted. Prices for Robusta have fallen anywhere from 20 to 40 percent in just two months. Some say the problem is less hoarding than the fact that traders are purchasing cautiously small sums at a time.

That's bad news for my wakeup call. Before the crash, the United States imported over 2 million 60kg bags of coffee in just 5 months. It's even worse news for the farmers whose crops are now worth less. Coffee plants don't produce beans for two to three years after planting -- meaning the newest converts to the crop are the hardest hit; their first payoffs are naught.

That could be hard to swallow.

Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images

Over the last few weeks, we've been keeping tabs on the omnipresent Simone Wallmeyer, a trader who sits in front of the big board at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and whose image seems bound to every headline about European stocks. Picking up on the recent follies of financial photojournalism, Der Spiegel has put up a photo essay of the best and the worst photos taken during the crisis. They've also interviewed a couple of the photographers at the exchange:

. . .in the last few weeks, photographers seem to be going out of their way to illustrate the financial crisis in new ways. A picture of a bank reflected upside down in a puddle, for example. Or bankers holding umbrellas. Or storm clouds over world capitals. Anything to symbolize an economy in freefall.

"Sometimes you sit there for two hours and don't see anything to photograph," Kai Pfaffenbach, a 13-year DAX veteran who takes pictures for Reuters, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But I think there are many original images. The DAX index conflated with an emergency exit sign, for example. But yeah, it is difficult to do something that nobody else has done yet."

I feel nothing but empathy for these poor photographers. Getting assigned to stories with a big visual component must be a blessing. But when your subject matter revolves around the abstractions of numbers and deals, it must take real talent to get a halfway interesting shot.

Also check out the excellent Sad Guys on Trading Floors, a blog devoted entirely to posting images of hysterical traders with snarky commentary.

Still think the global credit crunch is all about the TED spread and collateralized debt obligations? Think harder. Export-bound grain has started piling up in Canada as sellers have begun refusing to trust the credit lines and financial institutions linked to their foreign buyers.

The problem is that Canada's export cargoes don't get loaded until buyers can prove their ability to pay -- proof that has been increasingly hard to come by in the wake of bank defaults and shrinking credit markets worldwide. Unable to get credit lines, many buyers have left the grain market, generating big losses for Canadian shippers. Add to this the greater costs that shippers now shoulder because of delayed payments, and the picture starts looking pretty bleak. 

And Canada isn't the only country suffering from the crunch. U.S. and South American shippers are taking even harder hits. Los Angeles and Long Beach -- home to two of the biggest ports in the United States -- have already seen a 9 percent drop in imports this year. Global shipping rates are down 74 percent from last May. 

With 90 percent of the world's trade in goods going by ship, credit access is key to trade's survival. It's also key to investment in product development, which surely will fall as manufacturers face greater declines in profits. Moldy grain looks like small peanuts by comparison, but don't tell that to Canadian shippers. Grain is their country's biggest agricultural export. 

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

Need an even greater economic catastrophe to keep your mind off the financial crisis? How about the rainforest crunch?

According to a report by the European Union commissioned study, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, deforestation is costing the world up to five times more than the financial crisis figures (so far) -- between $2 and $5 trillion a year.

Sound like a stretch? As FP likes to say, "think again." Forests provide a plethora of "services," such as carbon dioxide absorption, erosion prevention, and biodiversity (which, in the most selfishly pragmatic evaluation spells out new medicines, new food sources, and eye candy). So if the forests disappear, we'll have to find a new way to pay for -- or live without -- those kinds of services. The price tag is basically impossible to estimate (though leave it to the EU to try) but certainly huge.

A second phase of the study will be completed by 2010. If things keep going the way they have been for the last couple of days, the financial crisis might just have time to catch up.

According to executives surveyed for the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index, the following countries have the world's soundest banking systems:

1. Canada
2. Sweden
3. Luxembourg
4. Australia