— The dollar index remains at 71 today…a whisper away from all-time lows.

As the dollar remains weak — and, by all accounts above, it could get weaker — and energy, by extension, gets colossally more expensive, now would be a good time to think about diversifying your savings into EverBank’s World Energy CD. The new CD is indexed equally to Canadian and Australian dollars and Norwegian kroner in an effort to take advantage of those currencies’ exposure to oil, natural gas and uranium riches.

The new World Energy CD is available for the first time today. And because of our close working relationship with Chuck Butler and his crew in the trading pit, we’ve been able to arrange an exclusive offer for their new World Energy CD for the next week or so. It’s best to get all the particular details from them. You can do so here.

— The anticipated $5 billion bailout plan for Washington Mutual led by private equity firm TPG snowballed into $7 billion by the end of business yesterday. Good thing, too, since first-quarter losses total $1.1 billion, just a wee tad higher than the $344 million expected.

In the deal, TPG will get two seats on the WaMu board. The quarterly dividend will shrink from 56 cents per share last November to one penny this quarter. All of WaMu’s 186 home-lending offices will get shuttered…and 3,000 heads will roll.

WaMu shares jumped 29% on the rumor Monday. The news on Tuesday knocked them back down 11%.

— Traders are holding their breath this week, waiting for earnings season to begin in earnest. Investors still believe, despite forecasts by the IMF and Wall Street’s own banks, that we’ve seen the worst of things and we’re only a week or two away from buying stocks as usual.

Major U.S. indexes drifted lazily downward yesterday — the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq all lost less than half a point.

— Gold traders, too, are biding their time until meetings tomorrow by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank. Gold is at $915 as we write.

— Sales of previously-owned homes fell nearly 2% between January and February, according to the National Association of Realtors. The NAR’s index now sits at 84.6, a record low.

The 1.9% month-to-month drop is substantially more than the 1.1% drop outside analysts had forecast. The year-to-year numbers for February fell 21.4%. As usual, those figures take into account only signed contracts. Factor in cancellations, and it’s probably much worse.

But the NAR folks, ever the optimists, see brighter things ahead for the rest of 2008. “The wider access to affordable credit should increase sales activity notably this summer as pent-up demand begins to be met,” says NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.

Mr. Yun must assume the Fed’s relentless rate cuts will bring mortgage rates down. So far, no dice.

— Oy. A dictator’s work is never done, is it? After taking on the global behemoth Exxon, kicking out the Mexican monopoly cement maker Cemex, thumbing his nose at the evil imperialist George W. Bush and reorganizing the Venezuelan electrical grid, Hugo Chavez has found a new villain: Homer Simpson.

Venezuela’s Comic Strip Doofus Takes on the U.S.’ Homer Simpson

On Chavez’s command, Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission has notified the Televen channel that Televen might have run afoul of the country’s Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television by airing reruns of Homer and family at 11:00 a.m.

Rather than risk a drawn-out fight, the station removed Homer and family from the schedule…and replaced them with Baywatch Hawaii. Now, there’s some fine family viewing.

Doh!

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