Europe has its own SCOAMF and it's called the Eurozone: Ex-PM Gordon Brown admits that "it's an hour to midnight"

Last week's band-aids and bailing wire are wearing away as Europe's debt problems continue to multiply.

Without another infusion of cash from the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF, Greece is slated to run out of money by mid-October. And U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner rushed to Poland last week -- to urge a resolution to the crisis -- only to be openly mocked and humiliated.

Europe is digging an ever-deeper hole as it vows to resolve the eurozone crisis, experts said Sunday as Greece prepares for a pivotal week of international debt diplomacy... Plagued by "parochialism, pettiness and procrastination," according to Sony Kapoor, head of the Re-define think tank, "kill the messenger seems to be the new strategy," he told AFP en route to New York and a frantic week at International Monetary Fund, World Bank and G20 gatherings...

European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet was more upbeat of the 17-nation eurozone's debt situation, insisting that "taken as a whole, it is probably better than other major advanced economies... The United States is in a far worse position, both in terms of its annual deficit and its runaway national debts."

...Trichet's remark was seen as a pointed rebuttal to implied criticism by Geithner, who warned during talks with EU counterparts in Wroclaw, Poland that "governments and central banks need to take out the catastrophic risk to markets."

In an eloquent put-down, Trichet said he didn't quite understand precisely, a tack echoed by former French foreign minister Michel Barnier who quipped that the EU could perhaps invite China's finance minister next time out... The European Union adopted its defiant stand towards Geithner after delaying a decision on when to release blocked bailout loans for Greece.

The price to insure one-year debt issued by Greece (i.e., the one-year CDS) is currently 110 as of this writing, which means the market is still pricing in a complete default by the socialist government.

Over the last 16 hours, the price of gold has soared $50/oz., bringing it back above the $1,800 benchmark.

Yesterday the Prime Minister of Greece canceled a planned trip to the United States "because of the gravity of his country's financial crisis."

And former Prime Minister of England Gordon Brown has as much as admitted that the entire Eurozone is a SCOAMF.

...The euro cannot survive in its present form, it’s going to have to be reformed dramatically. We are I think at an hour to midnight in the way that we look at this issue...

European banks as a whole are grossly under-capitalized... In 2008, governments could intervene to sort out the problems of banks. In 2011, banks have problems, but so too do governments... We’ve now got the interplay between banks that are not properly capitalized and sovereign debt problems that have arisen partly because we’ve socialized or accepted responsibility for the banks’ liabilities.

At some point in the very near future, the world will be forced to acknowledge the failed progressive-socialist policies of centrally-planned "fairness", unlimited welfare, open immigration policies and heavy unionization.

It's unfortunate that the lesson will be learned -- once again -- by the world's poorest souls who were led down the same catastrophic, Statist path by liberals, who have never gotten a single policy right, ever.