REALLY LOUSY

Nothing has changed from last week.  Friday's stock market performance is beginning to look like a dead cat bounce as there is very little good news out there anywhere.  This morning the ECB released a report on the state of European banking--which will face the results of the latest "stress test" in a few weeks--which was quite dismal.  While the risk today in the industry is not as great today as it was last year, it is hardly robust and definitely subject to continued weakness in the EU economy.  Left out of course is the was any discussion of the fact that Euro banks are still up to the gills in sovereign risk paper which carries a zero-weighted risk appraisal which I suppose is OK as long as the ECB maintains its open bid although by any rational judgement the zero ain't zero.  But, on we go.

Speaking of banks, Over Here the big boys release third quarter earning this week starting tomorrow.  In past years one would have expected a blow-out trading number from all as it was one way traffic for the three months save perhaps for Wells Fargo which after all is an S & L, but regulator oversight has resulted in greatly reduced trading volumes and positions which will probably put a crimp on things.  I simply have to stop referring to Dodd/Frank as the stupidest piece of legislation ever, but the fact remains it is.

Anyway, a Frenchman was named the winner of the Nobel Prize for "Economic Science" which is the new classification for the field.  Why that was necessary I have no idea but it fulfills the worst nightmare of Friedrich Hayck, who in the mind of some was the last economist to make sense and who shuttered at economics being called a "science" because there could be a half-dozen interpretations of the same data.  Provable certainty?  Nah. Not even close.  But of course official France went wild, whilst at the same time releasing a budget that smelled of failure and will be taken as a quite deliberate swipe at the council of ministers.  A laugh a minute, that place Over There.

I have a fear that is the bank numbers bomb out, these markets might get really ugly, but we have to wait, starting tomorrow for that.  In the mean time, I think I'll watch the leaves turn color.  Predictable and peaceful, that.