On Friday November 21 the world came within a hair’s breadth of the most colossal financial collapse in world history according to bankers on the inside of events with whom we have contact. The trigger was the bank which only two years ago was America’s largest, Citigroup. The size of the US Government de facto nationalization of the $2 trillion banking institution is an indication of shocks yet to come in other major US and perhaps European banks thought to be ‘too big to fail.’

It is only the beginning. The 2009 year will be one of titanic shocks and changes to the global order of a scale perhaps not experienced in the past five centuries. This is why we speak of the end of the American Century and its Dollar System.

This crisis is on the scale of the fall of the Roman Empire.

Well, if our fall is like the Romans I suppose we should all chill out and relax. Took them hundreds of years to finally tank.

The scale of the hidden losses of perhaps the twenty largest major US banks are so enormous that if not before, the first Presidential decree of President Barack Obama will likely have to be declaration of a US ‘Bank Holiday’ and the full nationalization of the major banks, taking on the toxic assets and losses until the economy can again function with credit flowing to industry once more.