The Market On Monday

  Good morning. It is 30 degrees and cloudy yet sunny here in Upstate NY. I hope your weekend was swell. I'm rereading 'A Cather In The Rye' and trying out the language of the era described in the book. We are sad to see Lou Reed pass away. His songs are etched into our psyche. I'm not any kind of rock historian but it does strike me that the lyrical content of his songs drove through the massive underbelly of America as also assumed by a writer like William Burroughs. You know what I mean so I won't go into the descriptions. What also strikes me more than anything else is why that angle needed to be highlighted during that period of the late 60s and early 70s. What was it in our society that called for a shedding of light on the underbelly through pop music during that time. why did we want to hear that.

  At 7:55 a.m. ET futures are modestly higher and the price of oil per barrel is down. The market is poised to open higher with some energy stocks under pressure.

  Investors are working with the assumption that Q.E.3 will continue through the Winter and that is a thing of joy in their minds. They call it a bond buying program but it is more than that it is a liquidity infusion program and as the Fed Fund Rate is so minimal and has been minimal, this is money to play with. Just imagine if you could borrow $10million when the DOW was around 12000, invest it in equities that you knew were winners, and then look at your holdings now with the DOW around 15,500. Yes your profit would be way beyond the interest rate that you were facing. You just made out like a bandit. As I am learning, the link between the state and private banking goes way back and is a mutually beneficial arrangement. So although the particulars of quantitative easing are somewhat new, the relationship between state and private banking goes back a while, this is not new.

CNN: Stocks: Set for another all-time high?

...widely expected to say it will continue buying $85 billion in bonds and mortgage-backed securities a month.