ANOTHER DAY IN MAY

This is beginning to bother me. Got lucky yesterday when Barnie jumped up ugly with the Fed but today there's nothing out there save for the Euros telling Portugal they are going to sweeten their restructure deal which is good I guess but hardly the stuff that blogs are made of. It's quiet and like they say in the war movies, too quiet.

The economic numbers were not good the past few days and I'm even beginning to worry about the profit rises some of the big companies are showing. No one seems to be considering how much of that profitability stems from currency translation and to be honest, unless somebody tells me I'm not looking it up; I'm old and lazy. I would bet a very small amount, however, that a goodly portion of it does come as a result of the ever-weakening dollar which continued its slide today. Nevertheless, yields on Treasuries continued to fall which is certainly counter-intuitive which says to me that those, besides the Fed and the world's central banks who want to own the damn things are doing so because they don't want to own anything else. As my grandfather from the Old Country used to say, "Ima no likee." On top of all that, oil is down and silver has fallen off the cliff as the speculators take profits and take them quickly. Joe Biden has been appointed by The Leader to solve our fiscal mess (terrifying in itself) while he's off to take a victory lap at the site of the World Trade Center. Maureen Dowd and the NYT got all mushy today talking about The Leader's "guts" in ordering the hit on Bin Laden and I couldn't help thinking once again about Lee Trevino who said that real guts is playing a five dollar Nassau with two bucks in your pocket. Don't get me wrong, but the hit was easy: you pray for the kids who have to carry it out but it was a no-brainer...for the kind of nut who wants that job. Count me out.

So here I am in the fly-over zone on a beautiful (if chilly) spring days musing about these things and worrying about why I'm worrying. Another beautiful day in May and Ima no likee.