On February 20, in the Financial Times, Martin Wolf finally acknowledged the situation of the American economy and the seriousness of the threats it is facing: America's economy risks mother of all meltdowns.

Quoting extensively Nouriel Roubini's February 5 publication The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster, he paints a very scary picture of America's economic future.

Nouriel Roubini is a Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and is also the co-founder and Chairman of RGE Monitor (access to the blog is possible through free registration). He was one of the few economists who predicted an American recession as soon as 2006. At the time, he has been dismissed as a bear and excessively pessimistic.

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Lucie Aubrac, one of the great figures of the French Resistance, has passed away yesterday at the age of 94.

Lucie Aubrac was born Lucie Bernard on June 29 , 1912 in the region of Mâcon. Before the war, she studied History at the Sorbonne University and the Ecole Normale, from which she received the highest teaching diploma. She then started to teach History.

As soon as 1940, she became involved in the Resistance in Lyon with her husband, Raymond Aubrac and she contributed to the founding of one of the first resistance movements, Liberation-South. Together with Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie, they founded one of the most important clandestine newspapers: Libération.

As the head of an armed commando, she carried out, among other actions, a military action to liberate her husband, then one of the main leaders of the French resistance, from the hands of SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the success of this operation, the couple left France in February 1944 to join de Gaulle in London and then in Algiers.

For those of us non-Americans who, like me, have been following the evolution of US politics and the Progressives' fight against the Bush/Cheney administration, the 2006 mid-term elections landslide has been a great relief, and I am grateful to the American progressives and, among them, my fellow Kossacks, for their contribution to the Bush/Cheney defeat. It will be an even greater pleasure when, as seems likely (I cross my fingers), Democrats will win the 2008 presidential election and get rid of the worst administration ever.

So, everything seems going all right? Well, not exactly. The hubris of the Bush/Cheney administration has brought such a maelstrom of failures, corruption and crimes, it has lead the world so close to a global disaster (it could still happen...) that, in comparison, any other administration will look like angels come on earth to save us. But I don't believe in angels.