Here is your US Economy and the stock market... watch carefully.....



CAT disappoints, UTX disappoints, both with calamitously bad results in the United States. CAT called the US trucking business "the worst it has been in 50 years" (!)

I know, I know, its a "new economy" - we don't have to move "stuff" in order to have a growing GDP, right? If you want to believe that you should ride the short bus!

SanDisk beats but their comments about margin pressure hits their stock for more than 10% (well duh!)

So what's to like here in this market? Absolutely nothing, and that's the problem when you get to the end of the day.

So far, analysts are not dropping their 4Q profit estimates on the S&P as a whole even though the individual companies are! You don't think there might be just a "tiny" conflict of interest do you? Anyone remember Abby Cohen's "famous" (or is that "infamous") calls on the Nasdaq in 1999 and 2000? How'd that work out for you?

So is the short bus disgorging riders? Well, not too many as of yet. But it will, and when it does - you better be either out or on the "right side" of the trade, or you're going to be bleeding from your ass. What you saw today could easily be just the start!

Corporate earnings are slowing down guys. That's a fact, and its going to continue for some time. Reality here is that we're looking at a US Consumer slowdown and in my view a recession in the United States is coming, if its not already here!

Yet the "pump monkeys" remain out there trying desperately to get someone - anyone - to hold their bag for them. Don't be one of them or you're going to find that its a big hairy gorilla's ballsack and what's in there is, well, more than a bit gross.

Next week we get Apple and Amazon. The bad news is that there are no real decent plays on verticals available on either. Boo hiss. Heh, it is what it is right?

Countrywide (CFC) is REALLY swirling the bowl today - no real news out there but they are getting positively HAMMERED. You gotta love it.

Greenspan speaks (again) along with Warren and both think the M-LEC SIeVe rescue is a bunch of bull****. Good!

Now if we can get 100,000 signatures on that petition and get this off-balance-sheet crap BANNED ENTIRELY we'll be making progress!

The first 350-odd faxes are now delivered. If you signed and want to follow up with a phone call, have at it - your reps and senators have the document at this point. The queue is clear. Make me broke paying the fax bills kids. PLEASE!

Again - that petition is at http://financialpetition.org/. Go there, sign it, distribute it to your friends, neighbors and blogs. You sign, I spend. How often do you get a true "free lunch"?

Watch out on metals. IF we get a hard break on the indices - which will come if 4Q earnings expectations start to ratchet downward - you're going to see tremendous margin call pressure show up almost immediately, which will whack on metals like nobody's business. The only way this doesn't happen is if the selling stops in the broader indices! That's not a bet I would take at this juncture.

Hindy posted again today. That makes 4-in-a-row. I don't know if that's some sort of record, but it sure as hell isn't the sort you want if it is!

This afternoon things REALLY took off to the downside - the run for the exits got legs and started to extend. BE CAREFUL TRADING THIS as there's a severe amount of pressure in the market right now and this can blow up in your face to an extreme degree - but with that said, this definitely doesn't look to be over with one day's worth of movement.

Look at the ABX and CMBX today - it was horrible today....


Would you like some "AA" paper for 70 cents on the dollar, and some "AAA" approaching 90? Ouch. Or look at these "A"s and "BBB"s....




The CMBX is horrible too... only the AAAs have been spared (thus far) but they're going ape**** too - just not as bad....



Now here's the cute part - the only thing protecting the higher (e.g. "AAA") tranches is the overcollateralization of the lower ones! There is NOTHING inherently good about the crap in these securities at ANY level. So as these go "worthless" (or essentially so) the "security" of those "better" tranches disappears!

What's worse is that there are "default events" on UNRATED tranches (which you can't see) that amount to a "credit event" - and THAT can hit the upper tranches as well.

And there is nothing that Bernanke - or anyone else - can do to fix this. Even if he cut rates to zero it doesn't make these mortgages - written at the earlier prices - be easier to pay! Refinances can't be done either if you're under the penalty lock period and/or if your LTV is over 100%, and with housing price declines guess what - LTVs are going over 100%!

What you're seeing is the implosion of these CDOs, and over the next few months a huge number of them are likely to detonate. A goodly number of them are in SIVs and conduits, which puts the "fear of God" into money market managers who have bought the paper issued by those conduits. THAT they will try to bail out - but it won't matter, because the underlying instruments are still worthless, and a zero is a zero is a zero!

Nobody's going to eat those **** sandwiches any more - they've all had a bite and they all taste like ****!

Fun times ahead kids.....

The technical is big tonight - give it time to upload (and load when you view it) before bitching 'k? 28 minutes worth and, if I do dare say, worth watching!