Think about it this way: At $100 a barrel, the oil exporting countries are sitting on total proven reserves of about $104,000 billion. This means they are worth $104,000,000,000,000.

Starving for capital and hell-bent on retaining its handsome dividend, Barclays PLC (ADR: BCS) plans to raise $8.9 billion (4.5 billion pounds) by selling shares to investment banks and sovereign wealth funds around the world.

The Financial Times puts the rise in art sales down to the boom in oil and other commodities — money-laden oil barons, it seems, love nothing more than spending ludicrous amounts of cash on old paintings.

The ballooning US trade deficit is good news for the world’s sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). Current assets controlled by Sovereign Wealth Funds are estimated to be $3 trillion. They are expected to reach at least three times this amount over the next five years.

The blowup of two Bear Stearns Hedge Funds in the second half of June was the tipping point for the stock market in 2007. Those two blowups and their announcement that there would be little or no money left to return to their investors had a direct impact on credit crunch of 2007. That event, more than any other triggered the drying up of LBO's, M&A's, and liquidity in the credit markets.