Case-Schiller came in horrifyingly bad, with home prices falling nearly nine percent in three months.

Annualize that, dudes. Wow.

PPI came in worse. Headline up 1%, core up 0.4%. Zero-point-four eh? That'd be nearly 5% in price inflation on an annual basis for core, ex food and energy.

I've written for nearly six months that the import price trend has turned towards rising prices from Chindia, and guess what - it is no longer being absorbed, but is now coming our direction.

There is a big lag effect on this, of course, but now we are facing the reality of it.

Duh.

Consumer Confidence is now solidly in recession territory, coming in at 75, with expectations now at 57.9, a 16 year low. Ignore this if you like, but the facts are the facts, and equities, on average, lose 30% in a recession. We're only halfway there. If you wish to gamble that we don't go the rest of the way, be my guest. This indicator, by the way, is a highly reliable one - because expectations drive consumer behavior, and when consumers think the situation sucks and will get worse, they spend less.

Bang.

And don't look at foreclosures.

"U.S. home prices plummeted at the end of last year and bank seizures of property almost doubled in January, indicating the housing slump is deepening."

Here's the nasty part - it takes roughly six months from the time you stop paying and the notice until you get a foreclosure - so this means these actions are the result of people defaulting LAST JULY!

The peak of subprime rate resets? March of this year.

So you can expect the foreclosure rate to ramp for another seven to eight months, and that's just from subprime. Now add in "Negative Amortization Exploding Debt Bomb" loans, otherwise known as "Option ARMs", and........

Bottom, what bottom?

Oh, and don't talk to the FDIC. Word is out that they're recalling/hiring. Now why would that be? They are expecting bank failures! Gee, is that good news?

The market "shrugged it all off" this morning, with a nice pump coming from IBM's claim that they have authorized more share buybacks. The Dollar didn't though, doing a Wile-E-Coyote imitation..

What sort of stupidity are people playing with here? The "word on the street", if you listen to CNBS, is that "The Fed doesn't care about inflation any more."

Would be that people would ever understand what inflation is and isn't.

But no! We're going to export all our manufacturing base to places that will sew your jeans for 10 cents an hour, and then be surprised when the folks doing the sewing start demanding a raise - and that filters back to us? What sort of stupidity are we dealing with here? Probably the same sort that thinks there's a "Free Lunch" to be had anywhere else in the markets - or in life.

The reaction to last night's Ticker announcement has been interesting. I find it less than amusing that there are apparently a bunch of folks who think that I have some obligation to fund the video site for them so they can try to make money - and give it to them. Never mind that the video bandwidth consumption is on track to top three terabytes this month and in the neighborhood of 5,000 unique viewers were being recorded daily for the Technical videos.

Guess what percentage of those people had donated? Uh huh.

Oh, that bandwidth number? It's Tera with a "T".

This is the very same ENTITLEMENT MENTALITY that leads people to say that "Health Care is a RIGHT", or "Retirement (at someone else's expense) IS A RIGHT".

You know what? You're wrong. You know what else?

THOSE OF YOU WHO BELIEVE THIS ARE WHY WE HAVE THIS MESS IN AMERICA TODAY.

As for The Ticker, we'll see on whether its worth doing the work to implement access filtering. It might not be. But this much I assure you - the more people whine about being "entitled", the more likely I will put in the time and effort to implement it.

I'm getting disgusted with a very significant percentage of the population of this nation and their attitudes towards entitlements.

'Nuff said.

Come join us over at The Forum. Yes, it is still free to access, and will remain so, although I have recently implemented a "must be registered for a while before you can post" filter.

Why?

See, we have this spammer who is trying to sell software to..... wait for it..... print fake paycheck stubs so you rip off lenders.

No, I'm not kidding, and yes, I think he should get a "special date" with Bubba for that stunt. I have helped him along in that endeavor by reporting this garbage to the FBI.