I was surprised that Barron’s reported that the banks show their Total Reserves fell from $896 billion to $848 billion,which is a simple math problem that seems custom-made for my abilities in that regard.

The IMF holds 103.4 million ounces (3,217 tonnes) of gold that, if sold, can fetch about $100 billion.

Sometimes you have to just stand back and admire the extremes a real bubble can produce. What you have now, as Bill explained last night at the Doomer’s Ball, is the last greatest bubble of them all, the bubble in U.S. bonds. It’s reaching staggering levels.

While China made headlines with a historic interest rate cut this week, the World Bank weighed in with a gloomy prediction about China that received scant coverage. For emerging-market investors who missed the story, the World Bank’s assessment of China’s economic performance in 2009 could reshape their strategy for portfolio allocation.

The World Bank said yesterday that it plans to triple its lending to developing nations this year in an effort to prevent a “human crisis” that has been brought about by economic turmoil.

It’s not just the credit crisis that has been keeping policymakers awake at night. A food crisis is sweeping the world like “a silent tsunami”, as Josette Sheeran of the World Food programme puts it, leaving widespread riots and rattled governments in its wake.

Wading through more tales of woe from the high street… JJB Sports saw profits fall 28%; it’s closing 72 stores and laying off 800… The nation’s indebted…1m have an average £25k in unsecured debt…we find some good news today in the unemployment numbers.

This weekend the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, asked for $500 million in emergency aid for the UN World Food Program. “It is critical that governments confirm their commitments as soon as possible and others begin to commit,” Zoellick said. Prices have only risen further since the WFP issued that appeal, so it is urgent that governments step up.”

The Mogambo Guru recently weighed in on the situation:

And worse yet for us alcohol-besotted worthless lushes out here, heroically keeping bartenders and comely barmaids gainfully employed year around, the price of hops, an integral ingredient in beer making, has soared from $4 a pound to $40.