Public

I am literally stunned.

Let me see if I can collect my thoughts.

This was the title of an article from what seems like a hundred days ago.  But it was only Monday.

Tonight we found out the answer.  No.

[quote]SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) – Washington Mutual, which put it self up for sale this week, has yet to attract any bidders, the Financial Times reported late Thursday on its Web site.

Potential buyers are reluctant to take on WaMu’s huge portfolio of risky mortgages, the newspaper explained. [/quote]

Here’s my take on why the stock market bolted up out of the blue and gold got hit at the exact same time.

We are now in the stage of this crisis where the financial authorities are going to be using every trick in the bag to keep asset prices up and in safe territory.

Every trick except honesty and transparency, that is.

This report focuses on the recent move by the Treasury to sell $100 billion to "help bolster" the balance sheet of the Fed.  The way I view it, this is almost certainly the beginning of the end of the dollar.

I kid you not (and I wish I was kidding), a Bloomberg article used the word "spray" to describe last night’s emergency injection of ~$250 billion dollars ($180 billion of that from the Fed) by central banks into "the system" in an effort to provide some stability to the stock markets.

And I do mean ‘breaking.’

Gold is now up more than $50 on the December contract (futures), indicating that the direct monetization of debt as implied by the AIG deal is being interpreted by the markets as the potential beginning of the end for the dollar. The S&P 500 is down 35 points.

This is a very good article by John Markham of MSN Money about how we got here and the depth of the current crisis.  I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing.

For anybody who happens to think that a Money Market Fund is somehow the same as money in the bank, this one’s going to be a bit of a shocker.

This is an incredible turn of events.  This is the biggest news of the decade.

I was not expecting this sort of activity for another year or two yet.

The Federal Reserve has bought a majority stake in a private company in exchange for cash.  Where did the Fed get this cash?  It was created out of thin air.