LIFETIME LOW

Pending home sales fell nearly 7% in August, a very damaging drop (in fact, a record low) considering the elite economists from their manicured observatories had forecast a not less than serious but nowhere close to freefall number of negative 2%-- Such a widely disparate differential between projected and actual numbers is in recent time nothing new-- Bloomberg business news measures reality against prognostication in groups of housing economists, specialists and analysts on a bevy of issues it surveys and more often than not of late the hot shots have been found seriously disconnected from the boots on the ground-- Easy to do when the measuring perspective sits ensconced in the glass-towered-mahogany of denial while rapturing Mozart behind petite headphones and overdosing on double chubby-chuck lattes-- 'The Housing Market is too big to fail!!!!!!'--If one had the temerity to imbibe one of those lard-bomb coffees every time this glossy rubric spewed its self-deceptive hubris across the inattentive mega-complacent televised media-smear, the circus would certainly never want for fatmen-- Yo, Smiley Face, step right up!!--

Here's an amusing if unwittingly sardonic comment swallowed unchallengingly by a Reuters reporter named Heavens-- Citigroup, the nations largest Bank by market value announced recently that its third-quarter profit crumbled downward, off a whopping 60%-- Financial tremors aside the company's Top Dog averred a "return to a normal (mine) earnings environment in the fourth quarter" without stating how, mind you-- Reporter Heavens believed this optimistic blather helped drive the Dow Industrials to a record high on Monday-- Obviously an arcane coupling process eschewing nimbly elicited proof but, hey, in the era of faith-based build-it-they-will-come fantasia, facts, even the incontrovertible ones, as Mr.Reagan once avowed, are just 'stupid things'--

Never mind that the dollars, one would hope to accrue should the temptation to claim a profit from this stratospheric rally induce one to sell a position, would actually share the same purchasing power the still somewhat lean Canadian Looney, by world currency pegs, possessed last week-- Once again the hubris heavy commentators painted another reality amiss by claiming the Canadian Dollar had achieved parity with the US greenback-- In the US dollar-centered view of globalist economic supremacy the suddenness of such an astounding move might have merited some modicum of investigatory academics but no, not even the fact that it was our dollar that dis-achieved downward to parity with our northern neighbor's currency could escape the misplaced pride of journalism's obliviously inattentive stupor-- Facts, indeed, may be stupid but the US Dollar has fallen to a Lifetime Low signaling that a rise in one's stock holdings may not offer a commensurate rise in personal wealth and certainly not in buying power--Hardly, dismayingly so, a normal earnings environment--

For those born circa 1980-81 the onward surge of Gold prices to a Lifetime High clearly spelled out the disaffection held round the globe for the US dollar-- The inane gobbledygook about the worst of the credit crunch that "may be almost over' peddled by former Fed Prez Greenspan has merited some caustically unmuffled comment-- Ever the hedging master of doublespeak Greenspan may elicit more book sales with his omnipresent explanations and caveats designed to absolve himself of any complicity for the current crumbling financial and bond edifices he helped engineer and the book tour frenzy will certainly aid television's incessant chase for smiley-face infotainment space-filler in a comically buffoonish relief but the very predicaments that don't lend themselves to soundbite rectifications will continue to plague the global finance arenas with corporate borrowers increasingly a burdened focal point-- What would Big Al do if the rate cut that the arm-twisted Bernanke foisted upon the less than fully defined but definitely raging credit market turmoil fails to alter the fundamentals in any genuinely positive manner??--

Republicans for years argued that social problems could not be ameliorated simply by throwing money at them while the currently spineless demies of today are too timorously reticent to suggest that the radical disjuncture of real production economy in favor of the chicanery of a multitude of schematic variations on time tested ponzi themes will not lend themselves to any correction based on a senile dictum of more buck for the bang-- Short-sighted short-term bailouts for desperate banks on the perilous eve of insolvency only postpones the inevitable-- The dollar will continue to be the world's punching bag and consumer sentiment, even in good times a bit fickle, will have to find fight enough somewhere to prevent becoming accustomed to metastasizing demoralization-- Saviors will not be found in more credit cards--

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