Oil sailed to a fresh record Tuesday as the dollar’s continued weakness made an already fashionable retreat into oil all the more appealing.

Gen X wonders if it can ever retire. As Wall Street waits for Citi and Merrill shoes to drop, Goldman issues gloomy forecast. As if write-downs weren’t enough, here comes another $250 billion problem. A 17% first-quarter loss…When hedge funds don’t hedge. Coal prices shoot skyward… The sector ideally positioned to benefit.

The UK recession will be much worse than most people yet expect, it’s still somewhat controversial to even say that there will be a recession, which means that stocks aren’t yet pricing it in sufficiently.

General Electric’s big miss has the market spooked. But it says more about the credit crunch than global slowdown fears.
Inflated housing prices are a Western phenomenon. That includes Europe. With the dollar down and out, the euro could be next. Meanwhile, Asian currencies are soaring…

Although the earnings season officially kicked off last week with Alcoa reporting first quarter earnings, the real fun starts this week with seven Dow components reporting.

US banks continue to rack-up losses amidst the credit crisis.

Wachovia, one of the largest banks in the US, reported a $.20 per share loss in the first quarter, versus forecasted gains of $.40 share… Quite a reverse of fortunes…

Andrew Snyder says, “You do not think the credit crisis is over just like that? A few weeks of ups and downs, some presses releases, and some rule changes and the economy is fixed. Get real. This mess is just getting started.

In my recent article, “The FED’S End Run,” I wrote this: Beginning late Friday evening, March 29, we have been in the midst of an end run by the Federal Reserve System around Congress. The FED is about to be given authority to regulate the nation’s largest non-commercial financial institutions, including stocks and commodities.