Euro hits $1.59, Merril Lynch continues its free fall, oil climbs past $115 a barrel, and rice is now 3x higher than 2007

please note... ALL of these stories are interconnected in very fundamental ways, all of which point to the continuing collapse of the global financial markets... hitting bottom, imho, is a long way off...

is it even possible to comprehend $30B worth of losses in one company in only three quarters...?

Merrill Lynch announces job cuts after $2 billion loss

Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, posted a loss Thursday and announced that it would lay off about 2,900 additional workers. Including about 1,000 jobs already eliminated this year, the company's work force is to shrink by 10 percent, or about 4,000 jobs, over the course of 2008.

The bank reported worst-than-expected earnings for the first quarter, including $6.5 billion in write-downs and adjustments to assets in its mortgage, leveraged finance and other divisions. The write-downs bring the total taken by Merrill Lynch in the last three quarters to more than $30 billion.

i'm working with a gentleman here who lives in france but is an employee of the u.s. company that runs the project... he is paid in dollars which he converts to euros... he has lost nearly HALF the value of his salary over the past year...

The euro retreated from a record high against the dollar in choppy trade Thursday after a top euro zone official called recent euro appreciation "undesirable."

[...]

That sparked concern that G7 officials may be considering coordinated currency intervention to stem the dollar's decline.

it wasn't very long ago, only a matter of six months, that oil over $100 a barrel seemed unimaginable...

Oil prices hit all-time highs above $115 a barrel Thursday as the dollar continued to weaken and on reports that oil and gasoline stocks in the United States were lower than expected.

and look at rice, a food staple for more than 2/3 of the world's population...

The sense of crisis in the rice market showed no signs of easing as prices continued their record climb and a tender from the Philippines, the world's top importer, attracted offers to sell only about two-thirds of the half-a-million tons it had sought, Reuters reported from Bangkok.

In Bangkok, Thai 100 percent B-grade white rice, considered the world's benchmark, hit $950 per ton, three times its price at the start of 2007.

i don't know how anyone can look at the above four items and not sense impending doom...

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