WEEKEND HOWLERS

Catch the BIS report that came out last week about the exposure of European banks to troubled European borrowers?  What?  You missed it?  Can't understand why inasmuch as it came out on Thursday.  You had plenty of time to...what's that?  It was released on SUNDAY?  Oh, I can see how you missed it.  You don't think that was done deliberately do you, just because the thing was a howler especially in regard to German and French banks?  The BIS wouldn't do something like that would they?  Goodness, they are beginning to look more like the The Leader's administration every day.

In any case, it appears the French and Germans have managed to total up about a trillion...that's right, TRILLION with a T...in exposure to Greece, Spain, Portugal and various other garden spots in the news lately.  Now as we don't know the exact nature of the exposure it's a bit hard to make am accurate assessment as to how worried we should be or whether we should be worried at all but the reason we don't is that the BIS does not supply such a delineation of risk...never has...and in this case it might be a good thing.  Further, it does not list the exposure of individual banks which is certainly a good thing and a position of which our mor...eh...legislators should take note as they debate and try to reconcile the financial bills before them.  As I have said before the little the great unwashed knows the better as they are sure to jump to exactly the wrong conclusions in regard to the comparison of individual institutions producing never a good result.  Some examination will surely occur but not before the world will have exhausted all comments on the odd happenings surrounding goal keepers over this weekend and into today.

Obviously, the greatest Howler was the unfortunate mishandling by the English keeper, Greene of the "blast" that allowed the USA to tie the Whites on Saturday.  Shock and dismay all about.  As usual, all of England, as well as some residents of the Home Counties of Wales, Scotland and Ireland managed to miss the real story of how England was exposed by the hated Yanks as a rather pedestrian side, full of libido but lacking, except in a few spots, of any world-class quality and whose pace can best be described as being somewhere between average and slow.  Fortunately, America does have some fine soc...ah, sorry...football academies open to all which are producing some pretty good players as of late and a slew of world-class keepers.  Come on over cousins, you will find the natives friendly and the language similar in many respects.

In other news of note, the Germans walked on the pitch, sprekened "Guden Tag, " destroyed the boys from Oz und went home.  Scary.  The Dutchies look absolutely chilling, displaying from a country of 50 people everything the English don't have on a side from a country of 50 million.  The Argies are good despite the fat slug of a manager, the Italians looked...well, amused by it all yet tied...and the French, bless them, looked as though they had over-eaten before their match.  We all await the arrival of the Brazilians and, of course, Spain who may sometime later in the year bring the world to its knees in The Next Great Financial Collapse but will care less if they prove that they are truly the side to beat.   They show up tomorrow as does The Leader in a speech from the Oval Office, assuming he's discovered whose ass it is he is supposed to kick.  Does anyone out there have a President academy to which we could send kids to train?  We'll send along a couple of goal keepers for you to keep.  We have a lot of those.  But remember, "There's only one timmyhoward!  there's only ONE TIMMY  HOW............   AAAAAAARD!"