Economy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0Fi1VcbpAI

I know things are moving fast, but I object to
retroactive editing of online articles without any indication that
this has been done.

Looks like the markets are not all that impressed with the bailout plan.  I suspect that his reflects concerns that the plan may not sail through smoothly, as hoped by Paulson and Bush.

Turns out a bunch of people wrote their representatives (thanks everybody!),and a lot of editorial pages came out against this massive act of larceny.  

Now that the details are out, we can safely state that the US political and financial leadership has completely sold out the taxpayers and has done so in a manner that is startling, both in its recklessness and its brazenness.

The reckless part I will spell out in the details below.

The brazen part is in how this is being spun out, as if the entire plan were hatched in a hurried rush, at the last minute, after events forced the issue.  This is the spin, but it is completely false.

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.