Welcome to New Albania?

I really should quit paying any attention to the stock market for the next few weeks.   Legislators in Washington are, as expected, seeing what sorts of bread and circuses can be added to the über-bailout.  This, in turn, leads to investor anxiety…and the stock market roller coaster continues.

The entire circus also leads some to draw interesting comparisons.  For example, consider this snippet from the Los Angeles Times:

In an interview Thursday in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Tremonti drew a comparison to corruption-ridden Albania in 1997, when a nationwide pyramid scheme cost hundreds of thousands of people their savings and ignited anarchic civil conflict.

"The system is collapsing, exactly like the Albanian pyramids collapsed," Tremonti said.

Perhaps it’s time to re-dub the country as “New Albania”.