Financial Machinations: The Global Debt Crisis is Destroying the Economic Structure

Last week the Dow added 1.3%, the S&P 1.5%, the Russell 2000, 0.2% and the Nasdaq 100, 0.7%. Cyclicals rose 2.6%; transports 3.8%; consumers 1.7%; utilities 1.3%, as banks fell 0.3% and broker/dealers fell 0.6%. High tech fell 0.2% semis 1.1%; bitoechs 1.9% and Internets rose 0.2%. Gold bullion rose $3.00 and the HUI was unchanged, but up 47.5% on the year. The USDX, the dollar index fell 1.1% to 75.62.

Investors Becoming Overly Complacent – Stock Market and Gold Update

A routine I have always kept to is listening to market news on the radio every morning. Recently it has felt as if the morning market news has morphed into the morning job losses report. It is no longer tracked on a monthly or weekly basis but rather the consortium of job cut announcements have been a routine part of the morning news. This Thursday morning, we were confronted with 12,000 jobs cuts lead by Eastman Kodak, Wednesday brought us 15,000, Tuesday 11,500 and kicking off the week on Monday we recorded 71,000 jobs losses. At this rate we are on track to lose about half a million jobs per month, adding to the already 2.6 million lost last year. I cannot remember a point in time when were faced with such an onslaught of daily negative news regarding the real economy. It is both breathtaking and heart wrenching, the number of people losing their jobs on a daily basis.