A while back, I briefly introduced the idea of crisis fatigue, the condition where one tires of the persistent low-level crisis that infests the corners of one's daily experience to the point that doing something, anything else, becomes an attractive proposition.

Now the entire globe is experiencing bailout fatigue, as evidenced by the lifespan-of-a-mayfly duration of the market pops that follow each new bailout announcement.

The most recent example is the 'bailout' of Spanish banks, first leaked and then 'announced' over the weekend to great hoopla and fanfare. The only problem was that no details came along with the announcement.

Where would the money come from, under what terms, and when? Such information was just not available.

The result? A massive futures spike in the global stock markets that did not even last a day:

The markets are now entering a new phase of deterioration as reality swamps the near-heroic efforts of the central planners to prop, cajole, and rumor-lift the financial markets into something, anything that might inspire confidence and at least appear healthy.

I say 'near heroic' instead of simply 'heroic' because there is nothing at all heroic about trying to produce prosperity without producing anything besides words and electronic credit. It has never worked before and is not going to work this time.

The entire strategy of the world's central bankers can be distilled to the phrase "delay and pray."

Well, things have been forestalled, but the praying has not worked, as the world economies failed to re-enter the type of robust growth required to support all prior debts plus enable the necessary continuation of additional credit accumulation.

I don’t often make market calls or indicate when to buy or sell, but…if you have been waiting to buy gold, or have a dollar-cost averaging strategy in play, today served up a very compelling buy signal for gold.

For years, I tracked and traded the gold futures market very closely, and over time I discovered that charts alone were insufficient to provide a useful trading edge; I had to incorporate another set of market indicators, which I'll get to below.

First a chart of gold: