BUGS

Easter with the triplets and I have returned with pathogens within my system as of yet undiscovered by modern medicine.  I sware, they are trying to kill me and may well succeed this time around.  So goodbye cruel world...unless I am back tomorrow. again thwarting my efforts.  And oh, apologies.  Every time I try to use my IPad to write this thing it gets buggered but not to worry, I've only had it for 5 months; I'm learning.

The equity markets traded down for the fifth day in a row and the blame has been placed squarely on Europe by the same people who not two weeks ago proclaimed that the debt crisis had been solved for the time being.  I guess I'm living in the past during which Semana Santa  meant something and Easter was a time of reflection.  Not in today's modern financial world.  It didn't take the boys long to settle on Spain as the next target and trading all last week drove yields on Spanish debt up to near When-Greece-Was-In-Trouble levels and as if on cue, took Italian yields right along with them.  Of course the dumbo Italians did nothing to help themselves by forcing Mario Monti to water down his reform proposals believing, somehow, that no one cared any more after Greece had been "fixed."  As Masters champion Bubba Watson might have put it, "These boys et up with dumb."  But Spain is the easier shot (as predicted I might add), so here we go again.  I didn't expect it to happen so quickly and as a result I have to get up to speed with Spanishmaturities which I promise to do.

And of course it's the banks who will come under even greater pressure when everyone realizes that the deal cut with the ECB for three year cheap money was for them to purchase their own sovereign bonds under the theory that the interest rate arb game could go on long enough for the banks to get well again.  Problem is that now becomes the only game in town as the bond guys have now come to the realization that the banks have just loaded up on more crap and good bye new financing.  Can the Euros make it through?  Nope.  Euroland, including Germany will probably experience a recessionary period beginning this quarter.  Why not?  There is a general slow-down across all markets and little good news on the horizon.  With the news of the afternoon being the removal of Rick Santorium from the Republican primary race, the 2012 Presidential campaign really begins.  Nothing of interest will occur in Washington before November.

And now for a moment of real drama.  Over the weekend, The Leader nominated the President of Dartmouth College, Jim Kim...or is it Kim Jim...to be the Head of the World Bank.  The Bank, which remains today as the final resting place of hundreds of otherwise unemployable Ph.D economists, is shaking on its very foundation with the thought that an ACADEMIC who promises to govern based on the concept of "Observable results" is about to run the place.  Indeed, Jim Kim/Kim Jim is about to be the head herder at the Cat Ranch on H Street.  He will not have a clue and the institution, wildly mismanaged for years, will become the biggest cookie jan in Washington and that's saying something. I mean we're talking United Nations mismanaged.  The effort to place a non-American in the position just ended.  For those who work there--tax free I might add--this is a gift from the heavens.  It is also the stupidist appointment in the past three years but, hey, who knows?  Miracles happen...they do don't they?