The Market On Friday

Good morning and welcome to the first day of Fall. Fall is here, the changes are slowly taking place and in this part of the country we enter a glorious period. There is one little problem though in that we have a stagnant rain pattern that will limit our clear crisp days for the immediate future. The weather patterns are changing and we are getting 7 days of rain in a row, 10 days of rain in a row etc, its a bit wearing on the soul. Its not that we don't like water, we just want to see the sun a little bit.

At 8:00 a.m. futures are relatively flat (?), the dollar is mostly up against world currencies, and oil is now trading in the sub $80 per barrel range which means gas should be much much cheaper but it isn't.

Following this Euro debt crisis for some time one gets the sense that the timbers put in place to prop this mess up are starting the crack. The dam is breaking up as it were. I suspect that in the next few months we are going to see an even stronger flavor of how this Euro mess will shake out and effect the US and global markets. The picture isn't pretty either. But I am just an observer, not an economic expert, so I could be full of it. I still think we go back into a recession, the political will to improve the economy especially and essentially coming from the Tea Party Congress is not in place. The Tea Party wants to sink Obama in 2012 and till that time - November 2012 - the economy remains flat as in its present state or it gets even worse and I would suspect worse.

CNN: Stocks: Fear continues to grip markets

G-20 finance ministers attempted to inject some confidence...


...Deutsche Bank warned, in an interview with Reuters, that European banks could take bigger writedowns than expected on Greek debt.


...Moody's downgraded the credit ratings of eight Greek banks by two notches...


...fear continued to drive the world markets lower.


Oil for November delivery fell $2.18 to $78.33 a barrel.