You've Been Warned. So says the European Central Bank about an impending collision between the never ending European debt crisis and Europe's increasingly slowing economies.

Risks to euro area financial stability increased considerably in the second half of 2011, as the sovereign risk crisis and its interplay with the banking sector worsened in an environment of weakening macroeconomic growth prospects. Indeed, several key risks identified in the June 2011 Financial Stability Review (FSR) materialised after its finalisation. Most notably, contagion effects in larger euro area sovereigns gathered strength amid rising headwinds from the interplay between the vulnerability of public finances and the financial sector. Euro area bank funding pressures, while contained by timely central bank action, increased markedly in specific market segments, particularly for unsecured term funding and US dollar funding.

Here's the money shot statement from the ECB. Things are worse than right after Lehman Brother's, the OMG Economic Armageddon global meltdown almost, collapse:

The transmission of tensions among sovereigns, across banks and between the two intensified to take on systemic crisis proportions not witnessed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers three years ago.

Here come the dominoes in the form of global economic malaise. Contagion is when one nation's economic disaster spills over and affects the globe. That's the United States folks.

Bloomberg news has served up another bombshell story on the Federal Reserve loans during the 2008-2010 bail outs. Banks made $13 billion off of secret and ultra-cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. Banks lost $21.6 billion during the same time. That's $13 billion of free money in essence.

Literally the Fed committed $$7.77 Trillion to bailing out these banks. This dwarfs the $700 billion TARP bail out. Bloomberg:

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

The SEC has decided to scold Lehman Brothers executives instead of bringing fraud or even civil charges.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators may issue a public rebuke of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and its former executives instead of suing them for actions that led to the firm’s 2008 failure