Good morning Australia. It’s another triple digit mid-day decline on the Dow. Is this the Obama Rally?

Way back when I was a student at Easton High School on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, my classmates and I stood together at the start of each school day and repeated the Lord’s Prayer, then pledged allegiance to the American flag. In those days, before judges ended school prayer and limited flag pledges, millions of young Americans started the school day in the same way.

Last week, many of the 280 attendees at our Total Wealth Symposium asked me the same question: They all wanted to know about the possibility of the U.S. government imposing exchange controls.

Everything happens at the margin, said a dead economist. Americans alone probably drive millions of marginal miles - to places they really don’t really need to go…when they don’t really have to be there. At over $3.50 - they’ll drive less.

Most people can relate to the realities of how jobs and profits shift, and why. The idea that higher-wage manufacturing jobs are being lost and replaced by lower-wage retail jobs, for example, is a reality that working people understand. They get it.

So the total swing from a monthly surplus of $63 to a deficit of $58 billion has been a staggering $121 billion! You can probably tell by the way my eyes spin comically in my head that this is a Big Freaking Change, and it scares the hell out of me.

In 2004, then Treasury Secretary John Snow was traipsing about the globe trying to “talk the dollar down.” Why? In a word: debt.

I’m seeing more and more talk/speculation of the Fed announcing an end to this rate cut cycle after cutting rates 25 BPS. Hmmm… Interesting, don’t you think? I mean, come on, when has the Fed ever been that transparent?

In short, apparently these countries need the price of oil to stay high to pay for their welfare expenses…which means that they will necessarily be raising oil prices again pretty soon.