CONVERGENCE

Sales of new homes fell 10% in February--a large freefall not seen in nearly ten years--Analysts whose expertise usually goes unscrutinized predicted a 2% fall--no small discrepancy that difference between sanguine fantasy and factual reality--In the West sales fell almost 30%--Does this include California?--If it does(we all know it does) this points to a huge shortfall--One any of these self professed expert analysts should be truly embarassed to have missed--What are their prognostications for future foreclosures for those unfortunate enough to have been hoodwinked into adjustable rate and interest-only mortgages? If on average home median prices dropped $13,000 in three months won't speculators seeing this begin dropping some of their holdings rather quickly?The housing sector is showing ominous signs of serious deterioration--An interesting analysis should ask if suburban houses with the longest commute sold less often than those closer to the cities as gasoline by the gallon on average jumped 15 cents/per--Volatile oil supplies behaving...well, with a good deal of volatility--the summer driving session has upped its' tuition--there's a seminar somewhere with a grad student languidly opining about the juxtaposition of this and that--

Peak Water??--Serious drought in the southwest--Phoenix nearly 150 days with no rain--Texas panhandle thousands of square miles of rangeland charcoaled by wind driven prairie fires-- Fire season has the forest rangers anxious--Farmers in the midwest report that flow rates in some areas of the huge oglalla aquifer once pumped 1500 gallons per minute now yield in the neighborhood of 300 gallons--Imagine stepping into your morning shower and no water descends from the spout--Houston we have a problem--A rancher friend in Northern Montana told me he hadn't fed many bales of hay to his cows --no snowcover on the winter pastures--
Doesn't the wide wild Missouri River begin somewhere up in those hills -- Hard to recharge depleting aquifers without melting snowpack--

Bird flu found in cats somewhere in Germany--So far this avian flu has spread farther and faster than scientists anticipated--The question of whether it will find a way to jump to humans only adds to the general anxiety permeating world culture--Prescriptions of sleeping pills made a startling jump in volume among Americans last year--Work 60 to 80 hours a week chasing real estate dollars and financial conundrums and the reward is chemical sleep--One sleep inducer called Ambien seems to turn its steady users into marauding sleepwalkers who beastially attack their own refrigerators--At least one such user awoke to find her fist full of peanut butter--Houston, another problem--

Two year treasury auction meets with a tepid response on the day before the Fed will probably by all prognostication raise interest rates again--Warren Buffet continues to bet against the dollar--Will the rest of the world just continue to lend us the rope we hang our economy with--We continue to devour our children's seed corn--The sounds of silence eminate from D.C.--'What up with Houston?-- There's no problem--Once the iraqis stand up America will be Our Town again'-- Fat chance--

There has never been a large oil price spike since WWII not followed by severe downturn or outright recession--Similarly recession has been the expected culmination of the so called inverted yield curve in the bond markets--Short term rate yields exceed long term rate yields--Consumer spending drops as surveyed consumer confidence rises--which vote are we to trust?--Something is happening here and we don't know what it is--do we, Mr. Bernanke??--

Last (not so sure) and impractically least the surge of violent crime in large and mid size cities--Drug traders in their version of the long war??--not so say the cops-- petty arguments quickly and emotionally escalting into gunfire and the certainty of death and sorrow--This strange state of anxiety converging from far angled fields should give us all pause--