Financial blog? Who woulda thought?

It never occurred to me that I would blog financial matters since they don't interest me.  What does interest me though, is why things happen - it's usually for a reason.  So Last night I said the markets were haywire and made no sense.  This morning it is sorting out a bit.  We are in Depression v2.0.  It will last for many years and whatever comes out of it won't be the country we grew up in.

All the indices are down except the dollar and the Nikkei and that's only because the Japanese government intervened.  Gold has fluctuated $45 today and is hanging around $1650, $30 off it's high. Crude oil is down to 86 at this hour.  That's not trading. Those are margin calls.  Silver is down to 39 and platinum and palladium are both down as well - as it should be with a strong dollar - but it shouldn't be on margin calls.  Investors are no longer driving the market.  The market is driving itself and the richest of the rich are sitting home on piles of cash.  They will spend their trillions when they can buy everything for a penny on the dollar and the US economy has to crash for that to happen.

Gold is still too high.  The DOW is down almost 400.  Not a big deal at 11,500, but it is about to head down.  When it does, it will end up at about 4,000.  When that happens, we have a problem.  The government has no more rabbits to pull out of it's hat.

The exchange rates finally make a little more sense.  The Swiss Franc is up against the dollar and everything else is down.  When Europe implodes, the dollar may get a lot stronger which is good for everyone else and bad for us, but we are screwed anyway.  You can and should expect local governments to start crashing.  You can and should expect the social order to break down at some point and you should have a VIABLE plan to deal with it.

If you don't have access to sufficient food and water, right now, you had better find a source other than the supermarket.