Top 10 at 10: Merkel tells Brown to stop spending; the ING 'smoking gun'; the ugly Nuplex twist; Obama's liberal enemy; Geithner wants more; US 'armageddon by 2012' says Celente

Here's my top 10 links from around the Internet at 10am. I welcome your additions in the comments below. The backlash is beginning in earnest So far the opposition to the Obama/Brown borrow, spend and print strategy has been among academics, bloggers and a few no-name politicians. Then last week we heard the European Union President, Czech PM Mirek Topolanek, describe the Obama approach as the 'the road to hell'. Then British conservative MEP Daniel Hannan confronted Gordon Brown in the European parliament with this hard hitting "Devalued Prime Minister" rant. Now German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to stop an attempt by Brown to coordinate a US$2 trillion fiscal stimulus plan to be announced at the G20 meeting later this week. "I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money," she said. Here's the Timesonline report. There's a suggestion that Merkel and the Germans leaked the wording of a draft G20 communique to sabotage Brown's plan. This in the Australian. Paul Krugman is Obama's harshest critic New York Times columnist, Nobel Prize winning economist and renowned Bush-critic Paul Krugman is turning out to be one of Barack Obama's fiercest opponents because he thinks Obama should nationalise the banks immediately. Here's a nice Newsweek piece by Evan Thomas on Krugman. The backlash is definitely growing.  Here's taste from Thomas.

If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am), reading Krugman makes you uneasy. You hope he's wrong, and you sense he's being a little harsh (especially about Geithner), but you have a creeping feeling that he knows something that others cannot, or will not, see. By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring. But sometimes, beneath the pleasant murmur and tinkle of cocktails, the old guard cannot hear the sound of ice cracking. The in crowd of any age can be deceived by self-confidence, as Liaquat Ahamed has shown in "Lords of Finance," his new book about the folly of central bankers before the Great Depression, and David Halberstam revealed in his Vietnam War classic, "The Best and the Brightest." Krugman may be exaggerating the decay of the financial system or the devotion of Obama's team to preserving it. But what if he's right, or part right? What if President Obama is squandering his only chance to step in and nationalize"”well, maybe not nationalize, that loaded word"”but restructure the banks before they collapse altogether?

How Mums and Dads lose twice at the NZX An excellent piece of financial journalism here from Tim Hunter at the Sunday Star Times on the scandalous Nuplex 'call option'. Essentially, FirstNZ and some big funds held Nuplex to ransom to make a killing at the expense of Mum & Dad investors, says Hunter. No wonder the NZX struggles to get Mum and Dad investors to stay. Another nail in the NZX's coffin. The 'smoking gun' letter from ANZ on the ING funds Rob Stock at the Sunday Star Times has the 'smoking gun' letter from ANZ showing it told customers the frozen ING funds were 'low risk'. Should there be a 'full recall' (ie repayment of 100%) of the two ING funds? Currently ING and ANZ are paying a subsidy so fund holders can get back 60 and 62 cents back this year, or wait 5 years for 83 or 86 cents. ING and ANZ faces a running sore of very grumpy investors on this. I can't see ING's reputation surviving uninjured through this. Their initial abandonment of investors will not be forgotton. The question is how much injury can they sustain? ANZ doesn't come out of this smelling good either. I welcome your thoughts. Why Geithner's toxic debt PPP plan will just hand lots more taxpayer money to banks The best explanation I've seen yet of why the Geithner toxic debt Public Private Partnership (PPP) is just another massive gift to the banks. The guy doing the video is Harvard MBA Salman Khan. A fascinating use of e-blackboard and video. Armageddon by 2012, says a forecaster Gerald Celente is a trained economist who now forecasts trends. He got the 1987 crash right, the crash of 2008 and the bursting of the real estate bubble. He says the US economic system will implode, there will be a tax revolt and unemployment will hit 25%. Not even I'm this bearish, but he's worth listening to. He's essentially saying Americans will revolt against their own government when they work out their tax dollars are being spent to prop up a failed system. Peter Schiff says the worst has just begun Peter Schiff, another forecaster who predicted the Credit Crunch, reckons the money printing and borrowing is a disaster that will lead to hyperinflation. He describes the US economy has a Ponzi economy that needs to be allowed to collapse. America's biggest state has a failed banking system Two thirds of banks in California are in so much trouble they are will be under Federal Supervision by the end of 2009. This at calculatedrisk. We might need even more, says Geithner Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner said over the weekend the government may need even more bailout money to get the banks lending again. He says the US government may need to go back to Congress for more. This in Bloomberg. Here's a taste of what this plonker is saying. (Forgive my rudeness. I'm getting grumpy about Obama and Brown choosing to borrow, spend, print and bailout their way out of a problem created by borrowing and spending too much)

Geithner said the Treasury has about $135 billion left in a financial-stability fund while declining to say whether he will request additional money. "If we get to that point, we'll go to the Congress and make the strongest case possible and help them understand why this will be cheaper over the long run to move aggressively," he told ABC News. "The great risk is that we do too little rather than too much" to revive credit and stem what economists say may be the worst recession in seven decades, he said.