Euro Gone By End of 2011?

Links in the original.  Excerpts:

...the French now realize that an increase in the EFSF would put pressure on their credit rating, which would not be a good thing, given all the derivative exposure of the French banks. (And, by extension, all banks in Europe, which collectively need to roll something on the order of $5 trillion in short-term debt in the next two years, according to financial commentator John Mauldin.)...

(As an aside, an extremely knowledgeable and well-placed friend of mine on Wall Street shared his view that the scope of the problem in Europe is probably $1 trillion, which he thinks is just too much for the Germans to afford, or for the PIIGS nations to endure through austerity. Thus, he believes that the flawed experiment called the euro is going to come to an end in the not-too-distant future.)...

...In short, he believes that "in its current form," the EMU's days are numbered, to the tune of the end of 2011. What that means for investors (particularly European ones) is that, "when it comes to EMU . . . trade as you like, but run like hell . . . . I think there is a growing risk the guardians of EMU do something to our financial system that could be worse than anything we experienced in 2008..."

...I believe the U.S. banking system is far more sound than it was in 2008; thus, to the extent financial problems occur here, they will be as consequences of what is happening in Europe. Still, we cannot forget that the real-estate market is weakening again, and we have no idea how those kind of assets are marked inside the U.S. financial system...