Your Euro Death Watch update

1. Yields on Italian sovereign debt are RISING today!

2. Euro officials are going hat in hand to Beijing. Rumor is that China wants their loan to the EU to be DENOMINATED IN RENMINBI!

YIKES and double YIKES!

The answer to the question is "nothing"

Tyler asks, What happens in the Super Committee Fails?

I answer, Nothing of any significance.

Less than $1 trillion in actual cumulative total spending cuts ($167 billion is "interest savings") starting in Fiscal 2013 and going on for the next 8 years after that.

Pretty much nothing happens to entitlements. Defense is cut an average of $50 billion per year (from a base level of around $900 billion +).

Look, we are spending $3.6 trillion + every year! Knocking $95 billion/year off for 9 years is really less than chump change.

Of course the Super Committee will fail; failure is basically costless.

An observation entirely appropriate for the Euro debt summiteers

“After one strips out all the window dressing there is no way to make $6 billion in liquidity worth more than $6 billion in liquidity. But there are several creative ways to make it less.”

~Ken Rogoff [quoted by Paul Blustein in his wonderful book "And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out)]

Video!!

Obviously, I am not too great a videographer, but at least the subject matter is cool.

It was me & the whales, me & the whales, me me me & the whales

Thanks to one of the guides on our trip, I now have photos of me and the whales:

As always, you can clic the pics for more glorious images. And, if you are having trouble figuring out which are whales and which is me, I'm the one rockin' the shorty wetsuit and yellow weight belt.

The biggest pair of beer goggles ever

The highlight of our trip was provided by a 40 foot female humpback whale who apparently fell in love with a 25 foot boat.

Really!

We were in the other boat, when we got an excited radio call to come join the first one because something amazing was happening. We scooted over and saw a whale near the surface and very close to the first boat.

The boss man, Gene Flipse, called us into the water. After getting a look at the situation, I flippered over and asked Gene what was up.

He very matter of factly replied "The female is ready to mate and she's taken quite a shine to our boat".

She just kept circling and circling the boats (by this time we'd tied them together), or passing underneath them. Sometimes right side up, sometimes, upside down. This lasted for about 90 minutes.

The whole time, there was a very interested male whale waiting patiently for our girl to come to her senses, and they finally did leave together.

Here are a couple shots from that experience:

Just in case you thought I was kidding

when I said the whales were big, I really meant big!!

I took this on the morning of March 17, in the Silver Bank Marine Sanctuary while out for an innocent snorkel!