Eddie Hobbs knows what's going down.

There seems to be more people telling it how it is. I suppose it's so blaring obvious that there's no fix, that the truth can't be withheld any longer. At least we don't get many people ridiculing them any more, the scoffers have scoffed off, quietly scoffed off.

Of all the words, in all the world, there are a few words that may still be able to "move the world" again.
Those words are, "nothing, absolutely Nothing"!

Shares set for a bloodbath as politicians fiddle

GLOBAL stockmarkets fall sharply as the US fails to agree on a way to reduce the federal deficit and Europe struggles to prevent debt crisis spreading.

Credit Suisse said in a note: "We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it."

"Some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen - probably by mid-January - to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks."


But surely China can save the world?

Don’t bank on it.

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan warned a long-term global recession was certain and China must focus on domestic problems, delivering a fresh blow to European leaders hoping China would use its financial clout to help the euro zone combat its debt crisis.



http://www.news.com.au/business/markets/shares-set-for-a-bloodbath-as-politician...

Germany failed to get bids for 35 percent of the 10-year bonds offered for sale today, propelling borrowing costs in Europe higher and the euro lower on concern the region’s debt crisis is driving away investors.

“This auction is nothing short of a disaster for Germany,” Mark Grant, a managing director at Southwest Securities Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said by e-mail. “If the strongest nation in Europe has this kind of difficulty raising capital, one shudders concerning the upcoming auctions in other European nations.”

Turmoil that began more than two years ago in Greece and snared Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain has closed in on France and now risks engulfing Germany, the region’s biggest economy.

Economic Shocks
France will have difficulty absorbing further large economic shocks without putting its top credit rating at risk, Fitch Ratings said today.

Link -
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-23/germany-fails-to-receive-bids-for-35-of...
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As money continues chasing its own tail, it will eventually disappear, up its own ass, which was again reflected in the DOW (down 236 points)  & other European bourses overnight!

http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/zs=%5eDJI&t=1d&q=l&l=on&z=l&a=v&p=s&lang=en-AU&region=AU

http://www.forexpros.com/indices/world-indices

Barton Biggs, managing partner and co-founder of Traxis Partners LP, talks about the U.S. stock market and recession risk. Biggs, speaking with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop," also discusses investment strategy and the congressional deficit-reduction supercommittee

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/80865706/
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Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz talks about the risk of a recession in Europe and fiscal policy. He speaks from Helsinki with Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Television's "Countdown."

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/81345378/
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James Shugg, a senior economist at Westpac Banking Corp., talks about the outlook for the euro zone in 2012 and the role of the European Central Bank in backing indebted nations.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/81442070/
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Simon Hayes, chief U.K. economist at Barclays Capital, talks about the possibility of a recession in Britain.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/81538748/
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Overnight, after being up a hundred points, in a short trading day, the DOW again lost steam towards the end and finished down 25!

11,231.94  

Down 25.61

http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/zs=%5eDJI&t=1d&q=&l=&z=l&a=v&p=s&lang=en-AU&region=AU

The economy is at one of those crossroads where something is going to happen. Whether that will be a positive or a negative is often difficult to tell because at any time one of those "Black Swans" could land in our midst and change everything. Plans are fluid and and forecasting can be quixotic. That said I believe that we are at a critical point and the U.S. economy is heading for a fall.

Industrial production is continuing a flat to declining trend that has been going on since Q2 2010. Manufacturing has shown recent growth but it mirrors the negative to flat trend.

Prices are starting to decline both at the producer and consumer level. Oil prices are likely to decline as worldwide economic activity slows. But, as we know, political shocks from producers can alter this forecast dramatically.

Retail sales, adjusted for price inflation continue to be flat to declining.

Credit conditions are still tight at the consumer level, and business credit still suffers from lack of demand.

Exports have been a primary driver of the economy and have rebounded substantially post-Crash as a result of a devalued dollar.

European economic problems have caused a significant influx of money into the U.S. and that has been parked in Treasurys.

Unemployment is high. At 9% there are 13.9 million unemployed, while the broader measure of unemployed (U-6) is 25 million. While unemployment has been dropping at a snail's pace, jobs are not being created at a sufficient rate to substantially reduce unemployment.

Real disposable income is falling.

Personal savings have fallen from a post-Crash high of 5.8% in June, 2010, to 3.6% as of Sept., 2011 because consumers are using savings to fund consumption.

GDP is static rather than growing and the latest Q3 boost will likely not continue.

Auto sales are related to pent-up demand and are not likely to be sustained.

The top 5% of earners account for 37% of all consumer spending and it they who are supporting consumer spending. There is no broad based consumer spending rally.

Household debt ($13.9 trillion) is still historically very high and has not been substantially reduced.

U.S. sovereign debt is 100% of GDP ($15 trillion and growing).

All government spending (federal, state, and local) comprises 45.6% of GDP.

The euro crisis will have a substantial impact on the rest of the world, including the U.S. According to recent data, the world is heading into recession in almost all economies.

The federal government is currently running a $1.3 trillion annual deficit.

Unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and prescription drug (Part D) are $116.4 trillion and growing. This does not include the pending problem with student loans (Sallie Mae) or obligations to GSEs.

The MF Global problem is indicative of a declining economy. In a declining economy, company weaknesses tend to be revealed, as with Lehman.

Oil price have risen from $40 bbl post Crash to $110 bbl in April, 2011, and presently are at $97 bbl. Such oil price increases are associated with and often presage recessions.

Bank balance sheets are still weak because they do not book asset values at market, they seems to not properly book troubled loans, and they are encumbered by a substantial amount of malinvested assets that have not been liquidated.

47 million Americans (15%) are on Food Stamps. 48.5% of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010.

Americans' are pessimistic about their future and the future of America according to almost all recent polls.

An angry and disaffected population in America is potentially politically dangerous.

What is important when looking at the data is to spot trends rather than specific numbers. I have what I believe is a healthy skepticism about the reports from the multitude of federal agencies that I follow on a regular basis. They are often revised and probably understate the negatives. That is especially so with price inflation.

Crossroads Always Are Difficult
We are at a crossroad because with the world sliding into recession/depression, with the U.S. economy living off of exports, with a high level of unliquidated malinvestment, with a dearth of productive capital, and with money supply set to decrease, we are headed for economic decline which will impact the U.S. economy by Q2-2012 at the latest.

Outcomes
Recent indicators show that most major economies are slowing down, perhaps heading into recession.

The EU is in crisis and weak governments threaten to jeopardize the EMU and the euro. The remedies proposed by the eurozone require bankrupt states to cut spending and increase taxes. This will create economic disruption and economic decline in the countries being bailed out. Greece may withdraw from the EMU.

If the EMU chooses to inflate (print money through sovereign debt monetization), the euro will continue to decline as the result of price inflation. But, it is likely that will only temporarily relieve the pressure on bankrupt countries and their creditors.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock futures jumped in early electronic trading on Sunday on the latest round of proposals out of Europe designed to corral the growing euro zone debt crisis.

U.S. stocks suffered their worst week in two months last week. The lack of a credible solution to Europe's debt crisis kept investors away from risky assets and downgrades of Belgium and Hungary added to the gloom.

Germany and France are exploring radical ways to integrate euro zone countries in order to impose tighter budget control. In addition, media reports that the International Monetary Fund was preparing a rescue plan for Italy bolstered sentiment.

S&P 500 futures rose 21 points. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 146 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 26 points.

The U.S. market's seven-day losing streak attracted early short-covering as Asian markets traded higher and the euro rebounded from recent losses. But recent rallies on hopes for a solution have not lasted long.

Last week, the S&P 500 fell 4.7 percent, giving back almost two-thirds of its gains in October, the market's best month in 20 years. The Dow was off 4.8 percent for the week and the Nasdaq fell 5.1 percent.

Link -
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Futures-rise-electronic-trade-rb-803420598.html?x=...
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Another bout of buy on the rumour, sell on the fact!

That said, DOW Futures currently UP 186.
http://www.forexpros.com/indices/us-30-futures-advanced-chart

And, the All Ords UP 76.
http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/zs=%5eAORD&t=1d&q=l&l=on&z=l&a=v&p=s&lang=en-AU&region=AU

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse.
............................................................

Fed secretly handed out $8 trillion

We knew the last bailout from the Federal Reserve was pretty big, but not until now did we have statistics on the actual tally. If you thought that the $700 billion bailout for TARP was big, get a load of this.

Just exactly how big was the Federal Reserve’s bailout of the banks between the years of 2008 and 2010? Thanks to a Federal Request of Information Act gone fulfilled, America now knows the truth behind a colossal cover-up: almost $8 trillion.

Ever since the Fed stepped in to bail out the biggest banks in the country, Ben Bernanke and company have gone to great lengths to keep the exact details of the transactions a secret, citing that the truth would cause concern for the world financial crisis far greater than what was already at hand, saying in particular that investors would step away from the “too big to fail” banks that were benefiting from the bailout. And while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went on the record to call the bailouts to even the most “sound institutions” only “marginal,” details of the FOIA request obtained by Bloomberg News now reveals that the Federal Reserve spent nearly half of the entire production output of the US during that span of less than two years — the biggest bailout in the country’s history — while going to great lengths to keep Congress and the American people in the dark.

By March of 2009, the Fed had already dished out $7.77 trillion to save the US financial system, dwarfing other assistance programs several times over. As the financial sector was on the brink of collapse, neither the Fed nor the banks involved came clean with the truth, instead lying through their teeth to keep the total facts a mystery. Until now.

While the banks kept the bailout a secret from Congress, they lobbied to the Legislative Branch to imply more lax governmental regulations on the industry, something that would haven arguably been near impossible had the truth surfaced at the time.

The website Naked Capitalism explains it pretty clearly in not so many words: “The bottom line is everybody close to the process lied like crazy.”

On November 26, 2008, Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis told shareholders that he ran “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” On that very day, BofA was indebted to the Fed something to the tune of nearly $90 billion. Less than two weeks later, the Federal Reserve blew $1.2 trillion total in a single day to bail out the breaking financial institutions.

All the while, of course, banks were borrowing loans at interest rates of as low as 0.01 percent. “No one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates,” writes Bloomberg now.

That’s not the worst part, either. As the Fed continues to operate without oversight from the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, further bailouts are guaranteed to keep being generated at the cost of the American taxpayer while a recession still seems imminent — if not already occurring. Critics including presidential hopeful Congressman Ron Paul have lobbied to abolish the Federal Reserve once and for all. Could the next president help make that dream a reality? In the meantime, don’t be surprised if billions get borrowed at America’s expense minute by minute.

http://rt.com/usa/news/fed-trillion-reserve-bailout-401/print/