We’re close to September 2008 territory when things were unraveling….
Coffee and Sugar futures are down over 5% in one day. Every food commodity, oil, cotton, lumber, are down significantly. Futures markets have daily trading range limits after which they close and go home for the day, hoping tomorrow will be a better day. Stocks are down from 1-2%.
Since everything is still priced in dollars, you could explain all of that that if the $us dollar was zooming up 3% in a day. It’s close to unchanged.
So let’s say the traders think the dollar -should- be going up in value – but someone is out there selling dollars in huge quantities into a rising market.
Who has about $700 billion in dollars that has been looking for a chance to dump those dollars without spooking the market…. or maybe $180 billion in Libyan controlled dollars sitting in a bank in China…. but what could Libya do with liquidating dollars – they would have to buy something, but nothing is going up. Could it be the Fed flooding the world with more dollars to keep the US dollar from going up?
France has really thrown a bomb into Europe. The whole point of the E.U. was that individual nations would no longer act as sovereign entities on economic and military issues – that Europe would govern by consensus. Germany has been absorbing the bulk of the costs of Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Italy throwing away money on social programs they can’t pay for.
I’m thinking Germany is about to pull the plug on the E.U. Who would Germany partner up with if they left the E.U. to fall apart. As I was pointing out probably two years ago, Germany is now highly reliant on Russia for its energy supplies. Hello 1939 Russian/German non-agression pact.
Merkel in Germany has said they’re done with bailing out unless it is on their terms. There is a meeting on Friday to discuss the bailouts.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110310-711298.html
Aha! The AP is reporting that Saudi Police are firing at protestors. The end game is beginning to appear on the board.
Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran were mostly issues of British and Italian colonialism. Lebanon, Algeria and Tunisia were France’s homes away from home.
I shudder to think what will happen to us if the Saudis fall.
And if Germany pulls out of the EU that won’t be much better.
NATO has stated it is moving its ships closer to the shore (beyond the Line of Death?) in order to better monitor compliance with the UN Arms embargo. I thnk it highly unlikely anyone is trying to smuggle in arms for Qadaffi… And if they were, they would be using the back door – Chad, Sudan, Algeria, Niger.
It’s a transparent lie. Europe’s concern is if/when Benghazi falls, 100s of thousands of people will be trying to flee the country. The ships are there to block refugees fleeing to Italy. How they intend to do that will be very interesting. Turning away ships of helpless refugees fleeing an evil regime can cause people to make movies about your crime in the future. Maybe Hillary will offer to give them refugee status and resettle them to Minneapolis to live with their Somali brothers and elect more Muslim Congressmen.