Gold, on the other hand, is finally coming to its senses. Right as we were about to publish, the spot price shot up $50 an ounce, to over $830. There’s word of the U.S. Treasury issuing notes to expand the Fed’s balance sheet, and the American market is still in the dumps… rest assured we’ll have much more to say on this matter tomorrow.

The Russian stock market crashed yesterday. The ruble-denominated Micex index, one of Russia’s major indexes, plunged 17% — its biggest one-day drop since the 1998 banking crisis. The dollar-denominated RTS fell 11%.

As we cautioned last week, Russian traders are stuck between tumbling energy prices (the meat of the Russian stock market) and a liquidity crisis even worse than here in I.O.U.S.A. The blinding sell-off became so severe that regulators halted trading yesterday.

Traders were back at it this morning, as the RTS and Micex fell another 5% today. We’ll be picking this market over soon, in search of buying opportunities. Stay tuned…

The English are wrangling a crisis of their own as well. HBOS, the U.K.’s biggest mortgage lender, has seen its shares kicked to the dirt over the last two days. They’re down 40%.

Rumors abound… either Lloyd’s, HSBC or the U.K. government is circling for a bailout. Regardless, HBOS is giving English regulators quite a rash this morning. The company controls 20% of the already ailing U.K. mortgage market and employs 72,000.

Perhaps they ought to hit up Brit garbage “artist” Damien Hirst for a loan. Hirst broke the record for money earned in a single-artist auction yesterday. He netted over $200 million by selling pieces like this:

Just think how awesome that would look in your living room

“The Golden Calf” went for $18 million. Other works included a collage of dead butterflies, an artful arrangement of cigarette butts, some skulls and a big tank with a dead shark.

The $200 million auction smashed the previous record holder: 88 works of Pablo Picasso.

“Finally someone (yesterday’s 5 ) mentioned the decline in oil without a corresponding drop in gasoline, Ike notwithstanding,” writes a reader. “I estimate oil has come down about 35%-plus, while gasoline, at least in my neighborhood, still costs the same.

“I am definitely not a fan of a windfall profit tax on the oil companies, and I understand the need to plow those profits back in new equipment and searching for new drilling sites. However, if the oil companies do not at least pretend they are not completely profit driven and provide some relief for the consumer, some clown in Congress or the Senate or wherever looking to make a name for himself/herself will force through some legislation that will drastically hamstring the oil companies from doing what they do best, and ultimately affect all our standard of living.”

“I am in local government in the Houston area,” writes a reader, “and was in line at Luby’s Cafeteria today. I saw a couple of refinery workers and took the opportunity to ask what they were hearing about the great shape our petrochemical and refining capacity was in, according to the TV talking heads.

“They said while their two refineries were reported as unscathed, in fact, one was limping by with a compromised computer system, and the other said a cooling tower was out and was uncertain when production would return to normal.

“I asked them if they considered their plants to be functional, and both said not in any normal sense.

“I wonder if all the great news about how lucky we were with Gulf Coast drilling and refining has had a touch of spin judiciously applied for public consumption?”

The 5: Are you suggesting someone in the media is less than straight with the facts? Who would ever dream of such a thing?

Cheers,

Addison Wiggin
The 5 Min. Forecast

Source: Another Bailout, Why AIG and Not LEH?, Russian Market Crash, A Bull Market, and More!

Pages: 1 2

Pages: 1 2