HOW MUCH IS THAT AGAIN?

Probably be hearing a good deal of that this week in Davos where all the geniuses of the world of commerce have gathered as they do every year to spend their shareholder money and accomplish absolutely nothing except to be seen and have their photos taken.  Not that any one of them cares about cost but I suspect that more than a hand full might notice that the price is not quite what they had expected given the "GOTCHA" game the Swiss National Bank played on everybody last week.  The guys for whom I feel sorry are the poor buggers who run units in corporations to whom these things get charged in the internal accounting.  You see, if Jamie Diamond goes tooling off to Davos, it is probable that the head of his European Operations gets his P & L charged for all the good Jaime is doing for his business.  So, he budgets in a couple of million only to wake up and it's more like $2.6 million and how do I make this up because at the end of the year no one will remember why I'm over budget and I'm screwed.

OK, I got that off my chest as I do every year but we still have to ask; how much good could $100 million do for the needy of this world?  Will someone, sometime PLEASE ask that question?

Well, they are in Davos and there is nothing going on except the anticipation (yawn) of Il Duce's speech as to the state of the Union this evening and the anticipation of what comes out of the ECB on Thursday, assuming the trains run--it is Switzerland after all--and Draghi makes it back home.  That I am afraid will be yawn number two for the week.  The comes the real excitement a few days later when the Greeks get to decide who's going to run the place and ultimately, is it going to be run as part of the EU or not.  One thing they may be deciding in Davos is who and how much money is going to be thrown at the Greeks to keep them in.  That is probably how this plays out but it is less of a sure thing than in times past.  There is no--and I mean NO--good news anywhere, and if the ECB pumps a gigantic new amount of unusable liquidity into the world system, things are just going to get worse.  So let us just sit and wait and see what tomorrow brings.