Moment of Truth At Hand

In case any of you are still enjoying post-Holiday cheer, it may be time to sober up and come back to Reality Land...

Today the US Dollar index ($USD) dropped below its low of December 6: $USD

AND, to make this situation even more compelling, the $USD is *this* close to its low of 1995. We *may* see what technicians call "support", but then again, a failure of support would be a crushing blow because in terms of the charts, the abyss looks bottomless...
$USD 1995->Present
$USD 1973->2002

Fortunately for Mr. Dollar the new low today of 80.72 is just a fraction under the Dec. 6 figure of 80.91. This *might* be a head fake. The Japanese Ministry of Finance *might* be waiting for speculators to lean the wrong direction so that it can drop the hammer. The European Central Bank *might* decide to press the fire alarm button.

Lots of things could happen in the short term. For every trade there is a buyer and a seller, so unless one day everyone decides that they are happy with what they already have and stay home, differences of opinion about prices will continued to be argued in the electronic trading pits. And there is always the "last sucker" principle, which in practice means that when Time Magazine has a big story about the falling dollar then that means the dollar's fall is probably over and The Powers That Be need some suckers to buy so that TPTB can sell.

But, OHMIGOD OHMIGOD OHMIGOD!!! The sky sure looks like it is falling...

* * *

You know, my rich friends give me a hard time about using dial-up internet. I can only receive 56,000 bits of information per second, and needless to say, that puts me at a disadvantage ... However, days like today remind me of the basic fact that a nice, long 5 page report that requires 2 seconds to download can provide hours of reading and thinking pleasure... And I have several to share with you. WARNING: these are SCARY.

Warren Buffett puts on his hockey mask and fires up a chain saw as he talks about the $USD: Buffett

AND

Warren Pollock... Pollock

AND

Chris P. Dialynas... Dialynas

make some comments that really bummed me out when I read them...

and that was before I remembered that George W. Bush is in charge. OHMIGOD!!!