A typical financial tale – where nothing goes as hoped for, and everything goes as it should…*** The rise of speculative capital…pumping up a bubble with a chip on its shoulder…*** The three vicious cycles we must face…an interesting TIME cover…and more!

Kohn gives the wink and nod… GDP is revised up to .09%… Dollar Bulls dancing in the streets… Oil prices fall…

The latest data from the eurozone “looks like a resounding confirmation” of the single currency area’s resilience, said Unicredit.

Everyone is perfectly happy to let capitalism do its stuff – as long as they like the results. But cometh a correction and all of a sudden the press is full of whining pundits and meddling politicians.

Here’s a turn-up for the books: we have such a vast oversupply of houses in the UK that Gordon Brown is proposing to spend £200m to buy up some of the excess.

Worldwide real estate markets are beginning to experience symtoms of the bust which has helped crippled the US economy. “The housing news is ugly not just in the U.S., but in other countries like Britain, Ireland and Spain. (Recent Economist headline: “Britain’s property boom turns to bust: prepare for a hard landing.”) This means the flood of printing press stimulus will also grow more global, as we saw with the Bank of England slashing rates this week. Bad news for paper currencies; good news for gold.” says Justice Litle.

What’s the difference between a boom and a bubble? Can we expect every booming market to someday burst and envelope anyone short-sighted enough to hang around?

According to AP, fears of a deep recession “drove Federal Reserve policymakers to slash a key interest rate last month, meeting minutes show.”

I find it interesting that Big Al is getting testy about all the fingers being pointed at him for this mess. I believe I may have been one of the first to point a finger at him when the housing bubble was getting bigger and bigger. And now…today’s Pfennig!

Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Azvitt sent a piece by John Browne of Euro Pacific Capital, who writes that professor Robert Shiller “has determined that house prices rose in line with inflation, between 1900 and 1995, at 3.3 percent per annum.