Market Decline Based On More Than Fear:

Comstock Partners, Inc.
May 20, 2010

http://www.comstockfunds.com/default.aspx?MenuItemID=29&&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Today marked a new phase in investors' understanding of the EU crisis. Although the Euro itself recovered a bit, investors realized that Europe's problems could spread to the U.S. and impede or stop its economic recovery. This would possibly mean that the 14-month market rebound in U.S. stocks may not have been justified. The possibility is more than just a fear, but a realistic assessment of a dire situation. Even if the EU and the Euro survive, all of the member governments, including the relatively stronger ones, would have to undertake severe spending cuts and pay down debt to rectify their budgets. These actions would lead to a long and serious economic slump that would most likely spread across the globe.

The crisis is also reminding investors that we have undergone two 50% plus market declines in the same decade and that the S&P 500 today closed at same level it first reached over 12 years ago in mid-March 1998. The two major declines are a reminder to traders of the benefits of getting out relatively early, while the lack of progress over 12 years make long-term investors wonder what they doing in the market. For those who didn't get out on time at the tops in early 2000 and late 2007, the bell is ringing for a third time.

The potential impact of the European crisis on the American economy and markets is not just Comstock's opinion. In testimony before a Congressional committee yesterday, Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo stated that sovereign debt problems in "peripheral" Europe could spill over and cause problems throughout Europe that, in turn, could be transmitted to global financial markets. This, he said, could cause banks and other financial institutions to pull back on lending as they did following the Lehman bankruptcy. "The result could be another source of risk to the U.S. recovery in an environment of still-fragile balance sheets and considerable slack".

The Fed's minutes of its last meeting, released this week, indicated that the economy was not doing quite as well as advertised, even before the impact of Europe's problems. Attributing the recent increases in consumer spending to temporary factors and a lowered savings rate, they concluded that it was unlikely that consumer spending would be the major factor in driving economic growth. They added that the housing market appeared to have flattened despite major government support and that both sales and starts had stalled at depressed levels. They also saw the possibility of increased foreclosures adding to already bloated inventories of vacant homes, threatening a downside risk to prices. The minutes mentioned that commercial real estate continued to fall as a result of deteriorating fundamentals, while bank lending was declining and credit remained tight.

Other recent economic releases were also not encouraging. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported a record 4.63% of mortgages in foreclosure in the first quarter with combined foreclosures and delinquencies amounting to 14% of all mortgages. We note that this is before an expected surge of new defaults and foreclosures as a result of foreclosures being delayed due to attempted workouts and the pending increase of adjustable-rate mortgages due for reset in coming months. In addition applications for new mortgages for home purchases plunged in the week following the expiration of the latest home buyers' tax credit. It was also reported today that initial weekly claims for unemployment insurance unexpectedly jumped to 470,000. While one week doesn't necessarily mean anything, we note that claims have now been flat since year-end, indicating that the labor market still remains weak.

We would be remiss if we didn't mention increasing concern about China as a negative market factor. The Chinese housing market has been booming, and the authorities have been slowly tightening monetary policy. In the first quarter the nation reported its first trade deficit since 2004. If the Chinese economy slows down at the same time that Europe is dealing with its crisis the U.S. and global economy will stall. This is already being reflected in a sudden decline in commodity prices on anticipation of a drop in Chinese purchases. We'll have more on this topic in subsequent comments.

In our view the 14-month rally since March 2009 is over and a major decline is underway. The recent decline has been extreme in the short-term, and some sharp rallies are likely. However, we believe that none of these rallies will hold and that the eventual market bottom will be far lower than today's level.

Europe's Mounting Crisis: "We're on Life Support," Chris Whalen Says:

May 19, 2010 07:30am EDT by Heesun Wee

http://tinyurl.com/262m6oa

Despite a nearly $1 trillion rescue plan, concerns about Europe continue to haunt the financial markets. Late Tuesday, the euro slid to more than a 4-year low against the dollar, triggering another sell-off in U.S. stocks.

Beyond the obvious problems with Europe's "PIIGS", investors worldwide are nervously wondering how badly Europe's sovereign debt crisis is affecting the banking system -- both over there and here at home.

"In some ways European banks are worse than ours. They're certainly less transparent," says our guest Chris Whalen, managing director at Institutional Risk Analytics. "It's a strange time. And I think it talks to the basic lack of competitiveness, the lack of productivity really in Europe. And you also have the same problem in the U.S. We just have the flexibility of being able to print money."

So what does Europe's end game look like?...

"For Europe, basically they have two options: Individual countries can continue to borrow money until they can't. Then they hit the wall," says fellow guest John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Advisors and author of the Thoughts from the Frontline e-letter. "Or they can willingly throw themselves into a Depression by cutting their deficits dramatically."

For now, Whalen says politicians aren't willing to make the tough choices about spending and cutting deficits. Instead, "we're just managing bubbles here," he says. "To me we're on life support right now. We still haven't figured out as a society, both Europe and the US, how we fix these economies and make them go again," Whalen says.

Anxiously Watching the Euro...

With the global financial markets seemingly hanging on its every move, the fate of the euro is obviously a huge wild-card right now. But Mauldin or Whalen believe it's unlikely the EU will disintegrate and the euro disbanded, as Paul Volcker suggested last week, but both believe the currency is heading lower.

"I think the euro's going to parity. The pound's going to parity," Mauldin says. "And we're going to see the yen go to $100, then $125, then $150. Pretty soon we'll get a bid for $200 and $250," which will have huge implications for global trade.

"Not one of those countries [in Europe and the rest of Asia], not any of those businesses, and any of those exporters in those countries are going to be upset," Mauldin says. "They're going to be happy because they're going to be able to export with cheap currencies against us."

The Government as Identity Thieves:

Dr. Ron Paul Tuesday, May 18, 2010

http://www.thedailybell.com/1056/Ron-Paul-The-Government-as-Identity-Thieves.html

The spotlight remains on the Greek sovereign debt crisis as the riots continue. The terms of the Greek bailout from the IMF and Eurozone countries remain contentious with citizens on all sides. Europeans hate having their governments throw public money away as much as Americans do. The Greeks are not happy about having their taxes raised while their pensions and salaries are cut. Meanwhile, it is rumored by the Financial Times, AFP and others that Greece may spend more than it saves from austerity measures on arms deals with Germany, France and the US as a potential condition of receiving bailout funds. If true, it is certainly not unprecedented for the global military industrial complex to benefit from deals made by their friends in the central banking community. After all, war is the health of the state. The last thing big government proponents want is for peace to break out in the world.

This free flow of fiat money from around the globe to Greece will not really save Greece as much as it will grant a temporary reprieve to central bankers from the consequences of their mistakes. Sadly, this will come at the expense of the Greek people and taxpayers in Europe and America. Taxpayers are of no consequence to either European or American central bankers. Even the mere desire for complete information on what they are up to in our name is rebuffed, as we saw last week in the Senate with the failure of Senator Vitter's amendment containing my language to fully audit the fed. The hubris of powerful and secretive central bankers seems to know no bounds.

If someone incurred debts against you as an individual, without your knowledge or consent, you would call it identity theft. You would call your bank for a full accounting of the debts incurred in your name, and after some verification, those debts would be declared invalid and you would not be held responsible for them. Furthermore, if the culprit was found, they would be prosecuted and sent to jail.

Not so with governments and central banks. Governments that are supposed to be of the people and for the people routinely incur debts against the people. Some governments even borrow money to oppress their citizens, and then expect them to pay for their own oppression with interest. With a fiat monetary system, the sky is the limit for how much debt a government can place on the backs of the people.

We have reached the point in the United States where the debt our government has accumulated against us is mathematically impossible to pay off. Harder times, likely due to a wave of hyperinflation, will eventually find its way to our streets and I am fearful of how Americans will react. My hope is that we will come together peacefully and help each other, and that enough of us will be aware that the blame rests securely on the shoulders of the Federal Reserve and the special interests. They should not be looked to for salvation. They should not be given more power. Rather, they should be stripped of the powers that allowed them to create this mess in the first place.

Resistance to public transparency regarding public debts should be denounced in the strongest of terms, and the central bankers that incurred them should be seen as no better than common identity thieves.

The New World Order is Now Complete:

by John Galt May 10, 2010

http://johngaltfla.com/blog3/2010/05/10/the-new-world-order-is-now-complete-2/

It took them a long time. I was stupid not to realize the obvious fact. Here we are, finally, united in a new world order of happiness and a future so bright that I have to wear shades. For most people much like myself, we always thought it was the United States and the armed citizenry that stalled and prevented the establishment of this new order, both economic and political. Sadly us Americentric types focused on our nation as the center of the universe failed to see the big picture and I did not realize until tonight that it was not Presidents Bush and Obama that prevented the new order from taking hold. It was not the Tea Party, Republican Party or the Libertarian Party which obstructed the globalist regime. It was not Joe Redneck, Joe Six-Pack or Joe the Plumber that intimidated or slowed down the establishment of this order.

It was our friends in Europe.

And last night a shotgun wedding was performed, Miss America, meet your groom, the European Union.

The idea that the European Union needed $1 trillion to bail out Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain is absurd. Even if all of that money was obtainable on the open markets or via fiat creation it does nothing to repair or restore the economic engine of hybrid Corporatist Statism, but does indicate the level of desperation that the powers in the West are willing to resort to in a last ditch effort to insure the expansion of and maintenance of their fortunes and power. Here we are, at the crux of another crisis and a “miracle” cure is found by creating more debt to service, not pay off, existing debt from various member nations who were resistant to the idea of a unified political structure. Ireland and the other PIIGS nations wanted no part of a unified Parliamentary structure for the EU with the ability to dictate law and settle on a series of Constitutionally mandated rights for the member nations. Yet here we are with those very nations who opposed such a regime surrendering their economic freedoms and in turn insuring such an animal will exist, a beast to America’s east.

Despite years of people calling others ‘tinfoil freaks’ of whom I have been guilty of that years and years ago, the conspiracy is not that nor has it been for two years now. The conspiracy has turned into a course of action where people are being deceived into believing that according to the leaders of the West, aka the United States and Europe, that there is no other choice if we wish to survive as a civilization. Common sense tells the informed citizen otherwise but the panic and hysteria created on an almost scheduled, regular basis, be it an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, financial crisis, war, or terrorist act keeps many citizens from understanding or realizing the activities being undertaken behind the scenes. How many people realize that the new financial reform package expands the powers of the Federal Reserve to the point of extra-Constitutional authorities not implied nor given to the Executive Branch as written within that damned piece of paper? How many people who run a small business now understand that starting in 2012 you have to give a 1099 to every vendor you purchase $600 or more from? How many citizens understand that Homeland Security is working with the Congress to create a standardized National Identification program under the guise of the Health Care legislation to provide the ability to monitor not just the consumption patterns of citizens but the transportation habits, domestic and international, of our citizens to enable further taxation due to the risks created by those who can afford to travel to and fro?

And that’s just the United States side of the equation. Once the European Parliament convenes when the dust settles and the last fire from the riots are extinguished, the Eurosheeple much like the Amerisheeple will begin to understand that gee, we really do have a lot in common and perhaps unifying our financial systems and legal systems would be a logical extension from where we are now. The fact that we just put their precious European Monetary Union into debt to the Federal Reserve via the currency swaps and the International Monetary Fund loan program does sort of entitle those who are in charge to demand concessions of the citizens to insure a guarantee of repayment and streamlining of operations now, doesn’t it?

The next wave of the now completed new order will be to unify financial and corporate regulatory regimes because we “have to” and thus with that logic our sovereign rights along with the individual participants within the EU will agree to do the same. Beyond that, the human rights campaigns masked by their Eurosocialist masters will demand we in turn surrender key freedoms and rights as provided by the Constitution to insure financial and corporate stability, thus leaving the American citizen with no voice because we will have none in this matter.

The end game arrived with little fanfare but as expected a warning shot across the bow of the world economies with the shock of last Thursday. The Untied States has a banking cartel which was already engaged to be married to their Eurosocialist brethren but the right trigger event was never created to insure that the “people” would cooperate in such an event. Americans, due to the demographic shift, will support any and all actions that guarantee their retirement accounts as large numbers of the Baby Boomer generation is more than happy to sell the rest of us out to insure a comfortable period of time from retirement to their death. The Eurosocialist want to protect their 32 hour work week with 12 weeks of vacation so they are willing to accept a more “diversified” society if the United States citizens are willing to pay for it, thus they will accept their new immigrants, their new laws, and their new compliance with a budding world council to manage their affairs because after all the “New World” is going to share in their pain.

Thus the table has been set. Elections are somewhat irrelevant in the United States after the 2010 mid-term election unless upwards of 50% of the incumbents are turned out at every level, be it dog catcher or Congressman. The path has been set upon not by a desperation to insure world peace, as many thought it would in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, but instead a dying desire to make sure they can retire with their surround sound DVD player and golf every Thursday with Bob at the community country club. The Greatest Generation, the ones who fought and died during World War II and endured the pains of the Great Depression of the 1930’s have finally given way. The Sellout Generation, their spawn, will insure world peace and stability for a generation to come.

By enslaving us all to the whims of a cartel of corporatist Marxists hell bent on a twisted Fascist world domination.

High Frequency Terrorism: How the Big Banks and Federal Reserve Maintained Their Death Grip Over the United States:

By David DeGraw & Max Keiser, AmpedStatus Report
Posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 1:11 am

http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequency-terrorism-how-the-big-banks-and-federal-reserve-maintained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

The following article is the third-part of a six-part report titled: “The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death Spiral From Greece to the United States.” The full report is available here:

http://ampedstatus.com/the-financial-oligarchy-reigns-democracys-death-spiral-from-greece-to-the-united-states

III: Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10

In the aftermath of Goldman Sachs’ public flogging before the world in Congress, and while under investigation, on the very day that Congress was voting on the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment and cutting behind the scenes deals to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve, the stock market had its greatest sudden drop in history, plummeting 700 points in ten minutes - shades of September 29, 2008 all over again.

If you recall, back in September ‘08, as Congress was voting down the first bailout, the big banks made the market plunge a record 778 points in one day, fear and panic then led Congress to pass the bailout. Trillions of our tax dollars, the money that we desperately need to keep our society functioning over the long run, then went out the window and into the pockets of the very people who caused the crash.

What happened on September 29, 2008 will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of terrorism ever.

9/29/08 proved that when you have so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, you can manipulate a computer algorithm and make the market and economy go which ever way you want it to go. So on 5/6/10, just as the power of the big banks was threatened again on the floor of the Senate and a deal on auditing the Federal Reserve was being negotiated, in came a sudden and unprecedented ten-minute 700 point market drop. A precision-guided High Frequency Trading (HFT) attack to show Congress who’s boss.

If you think the massive sudden drop happened because one lowly trader hit one wrong button, if you actually believe that the entire stock market can plunge because of one mistaken key stroke by a low level trader, you are stunningly naïve. I hate to burst your bubble, but this was a direct attack.

In a market where 70% of all trades are executed by computer algorithms via High Frequency Trading (HFT), Goldman Sachs has the power to make the market crash or rise at will. In fact, Goldman has a major Weapon of Mass Destruction in its Program Trading monopoly of the New York Stock Exchange, as Tyler Durden described on Zero Hedge:

“Goldman’s dominance of the NYSE’s Program Trading platform, where in addition to recent entrant GETCO, it has been to date an explicit monopolist of the so-called Supplementary Liquidity Provider program, a role which affords the company greater liquidity rebates for, well providing liquidity, and generating who knows what other possible front market-looking, flow-prop integration benefits. Yesterday [5/6/10], Goldman’s SLP function was non-existent. One wonders - was the Goldman SLP team in fact liquidity taking, or to put it bluntly, among the main reasons for the market collapse….

… here is the most recently disclosed NYSE program trading data….

What is notable here is that of the 1.4 billion in principal shares, or shares traded for the firm’s own account, Goldman was the top trader by a margin of over 100% compared to the second biggest program trader.

We have long claimed that Goldman is the de facto monopolist of the NYSE’s program trading platform. As such, it is certainly the case that Goldman was instrumental in either a) precipitating yesterday’s crash or b) not providing the critical liquidity which it is required to do, when the time came. There are no other options.”

For further investigation, I turned to Max Keiser, who has written and authored similar Program Trading and HFT computer algorithms. I asked him if he thought this was an attack, here is what he had to say:

“May 6th was an unequivocal act of domestic financial terrorism in America. A day that will live in infamy.

To scare the lawmakers, themselves large owners of the very banks and stocks that they are supposed to be regulating, a financial Weapon of Mass Destruction was put to their head and they acquiesced.

As the inventor of the continuous double-auction, market-making technology (VST tech. US pat. no. 5950176) that is referenced 132 times by program trading and HFT patents since 1996, I can tell you that Goldman, JP Morgan and the gang simply pulled the ‘buys’ from their computer trading programs and manufactured a crash. And when the coast was clear, and it was clear the politicians were not going to vote for anything that would break up the ‘too big to fail’ banks; all the ’sells’ were pulled from the computers and the market roared back.

This is a Manchurian Candidate market where program trading bots start the ball rolling in whatever direction Wall St. wants the market to go - and then hundreds of thousands of day-traders watching Cramer on CNBC jump on the momentum bandwagon and commit the crime for the Wall St. financial terrorists, who then say, ‘It wasn’t us, it was ‘the market!’”

On Friday, the next day, after the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment was soundly defeated by a 61 to 33 margin in Senate and a deal was struck to eliminate key provisions from the audit of the Federal Reserve bill, Goldman was meeting with the SEC to work out a settlement in their case against them. Once again, Goldman proves that crime pays. Welcome to the New Mafia World Order.

Other than the two major operations carried out on 9/29/08 and 5/6/10, we must also recall a smaller attack on January 21st and 22nd of 2010, when Obama had a press conference and came out in favor of the Volcker Rule, which would have limited these HFT and “proprietary trading” schemes. At that time, the market dropped 430 points. Soon after this attack, all follow up talk on the Volcker Rule faded away and this reform has not been seriously addressed by Obama since then.

The bottom line, the United States has been taken over by a financial terrorism network. Let’s face it, we are all hostages of these financial terrorists and our puppet politicians rather be in on the scam than defend our interests. If these terrorists don’t get their way at all times, they have the power to throw their tremendous weight around and turn millions of lives upside down in a matter of minutes, and as they have shown they have no hesitation in executing that power, no matter how many millions of lives they destroy.

They set off this crisis with a wave of bombings in their initial Economic Shock and Awe campaign two years ago, resulting in massive devastation. Just to name a few of their greatest hits within the U.S.:

* 50 million Americans are now living in poverty, which is the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world;

* 30 million Americans are in need of work;

* Five million American families foreclosed upon, 15 million expected by 2014;

* 50% of US children will now use a food stamp during childhood;

* Soaring budget deficits in states across the country and a record high national debt, with austerity measures on the way;

* Record-breaking profits and bonuses for themselves.

Like other terrorists, they don’t use IEDs, they use CDOs. They don’t use precision laser-guided missiles, they use High Frequency Trading. They don’t have WMDs, they have derivatives. Let’s also not forget that they have toxic assets and dirty debt bombs just waiting to be deployed upon the American public once there is any true growth in the economy. Their nuclear arsenal includes hundreds of Trillions in secretive derivatives and hidden debt bombs, just ticking away, waiting to be set off… at their whim...

VIDEO - Fundamental & Technical Analysis of the S&P 500's Daily & Weekly Charts:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/zigzagman/videos/19/

Here is the end of the week Technical Analysis of the S&P 500's daily and weekly charts, plus a look at the important Economic and Earnings Reports due out next week...

Happy Trading this week...
zigzagman

"Your Big, Fat-Fingered Debacle" (Collapse):

By Randall W. Forsyth

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB127320706419088061.html?mod=googlenews_barrons

YOU KNOW IT'S A BEAR MARKET when the Dow Jones Industrials end down 348 points and traders breathe a sigh of relief.

The collapse is blamed on computers, but that misses the point. Debt deflation is unabated by the ECB.

At its low Thursday, the Dow was gripped with a thousand points of fright as the result of an apparent "fat finger" trade that, according to numerous stories circulating around the market, entered a sell order for billions when it was supposed to be for millions.

The stock in question supposedly was Procter & Gamble (PG), which was trading steadily around 62 until it collapsed to as low as 39.37 in a flash before rebounding almost immediately and closed at 60.75, down 1.41 or 2.27%, which is bad enough. But consider Accenture (ACN), which went from over $40 to a mere penny in the same flash before recovering to 41.09, for a loss on the session of 1.08 or 2.56%.

Some of these errant trades will be cancelled. Trades that were more than 60% above or below levels at 2:40 PM EDT will be cancelled, Nasdaq said late Thursday. Yet that doesn't compensate all that was lost in this fiasco.

I'm not talking about the $1 trillion of market value that evaporated in the past three sessions. That's based on the Wilshire 5000, the broadest measure of the U.S. stock market, which reflects closing prices.

But ordinary stock investors were directly affected by the mindless selling of stocks by electronic, high-frequency trading algorithms that reacted to the sudden plunge in the market.

Limit orders to buy stocks at below-market prices were executed, which got bargains for buyers. Conversely, sellers got correspondingly lower prices.

For instance, an investor who might have placed a stop-limit order (which gets triggered if a stock drops to a certain price to limit losses) would have had that order executed unexpectedly. But it wouldn't be because of a fundamental market drop but a computer gone wild. (I know, because it happened to me.)

Thursday's thousand-Dow point fiasco is just another black eye for Wall Street at a time it is already under attack.

After Congressional hearings with bewildering references to CDS, CDO and all manner of mind-bending market arcana, the bizarre swings seen on a day such as this only confirms Washington's and Middle America's worst suspicions about Wall Street.

Instead of being a provider of capital to finance growth of the great American economy, days like this make Wall Street seem as if it is nothing but a casino. And as with all casinos, it seems one that is designed to separate the customer from his money.

Yet even after the near-thousand-point drop was reversed, the major U.S. averages were still down more than 3% and holders of equities $1 trillion poorer than three days earlier. Something more than fat fingers is afoot.

"Those losses, led by financials, were no glitch, but a clear reflection of the fact that sovereign debt woes due to indiscriminate Keynesian deficit spending is outrunning tepid global recovery and threatening the next financial blowout," asserts Uwe Parpart, Cantor Fitzgerald's chief economist and strategist for Asia.

"A machine or bad entry may have been the catalyst, but the scene was set for a big fall," he continues. "The fact that gold prices jumped and barely came back down; that the euro dropped one big figure [that is, more than a full cent against the dollar] and stayed down; that oil tanked -- and all that accompanied by a sharp unwinding of carry trades…amply proves the point."

The unwinding of carry trades was evident in a sharp drop in the Australian dollar's cross-rate against the yen, Parpart points out. Carry trades involve buying high-yielding assets, such as those in Aussie dollars, with borrowings in low-yielding currencies, in this case Japanese yen.

It could also be in dollars. And the unwinding of carry trades means buying greenbacks to repay those borrowings. As a result, the dollar soared further against the euro, with the common currency plunging below $1.27 amid continuing protests in Greece and the European Central Bank's stand-pat policy position.

Not surprisingly, the flight to quality accelerated, with Treasuries soaring again and yields plunging to 2010 lows. The benchmark 10-year note yield ended at 3.40%, down sharply from 4% a month ago. The popular way to play long Treasuries, the iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond exchange-traded fund (ticker: TLT) gained over 3% Thursday and is up over 10% from a month ago.

But corporate credits decoupled from Treasuries amid continued stresses in the money markets, especially the European interbank markets. The iShares iBoxx $ Invesment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) fell 1.65% while Treasuries were soaring. Liquidity in the corporate bond market is diminishing, Loomis Sayles' veteran bond manager Dan Fuss said at a mutual-fund conference Thursday.

Beyond the monster, momentary glitches that sent the equity markets into freefall momentarily, it is the reemergence of the credit stresses that were at the core of the 2008 meltdown that is important.

In 2008, that was the result of funding difficulties by institutions left on the hook for errant credit decisions. In the case of Lehman Brothers, the U.S. authorities claimed they didn't have the power to step in to stop the panic resulting from its collapse. When it came to AIG, they found the necessary authority to stanch the bleeding.

Ultimately, the federal government came to the fore with the much-criticized TARP, or Troubled Assets Relief Program. The Federal Reserve followed with its massive purchases of Treasury, agency and mortgage-backed securities totaling $1.75 trillion. The recovery in the markets roughly dates from the March 2009 Federal Open Market Committee when that program, commonly referred to as quantitative easing.

Now, with civil unrest in Greece instead of the collapse of U.S. financial institutions, the ECB Thursday declined to take the same decisive actions that the Fed took in March of last year. For better or worse, the ECB refused to step in to monetize the debts of the beleaguered nations even as civil unrest continued in the Streets of Athens.

The aggressive actions to counter the credit crises in the U.S. and the U.K. have been roundly criticized on the Right and the Left of both countries.

British authorities worried about civil unrest had they let Northern Rock fail. The run on banks and especially money-market funds could have been destabilizing in the U.S. Moreover, the steps taken to counter the crisis by the outgoing Bush administrations were continued and extended by the Obama administration.

The lesson is this goes far beyond some computer glitches, fat fingers or other technical difficulties. And the Greek crisis is no more just a European problem than the subprime mortgage collapse was solely an American problem. In sum, to think that this is only a momentary downdraft is a delusion.

Stocks Slide As New Doubts About Greece Aid Emerge:

Stocks in US, Europe slump as fears of debt contagion from Greece worsen...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Stocks-slide-as-new-doubts-apf-2098108080.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

Stephen Bernard and Tim Paradis, AP Business Writers, On Tuesday May 4, 2010, 11:40 am

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks plunged around the world Tuesday as fears spread that Europe's attempt to contain Greece's debt crisis would fail. The dollar spiked against the embattled euro, sending prices for oil and other commodities sharply lower.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 250 points, erasing its 143-point gain from Monday. The Dow and broader indexes each fell more than 2 percent. Treasury prices rose on increased demand for safety investments.

Stocks have seesawed sharply in the past week as Europe's efforts to agree on a bailout package for Greece proceeded in fits and starts. An agreement finally came together over the weekend, but its ballooning size of $144 billion has investors worried that Europe would have an even tougher time assembling an aid package if a larger country such as Spain or Portugal were to get in trouble.

Meanwhile protests erupted throughout Greece against the spending cuts the country has promised to make in order to receive the bailout loans. A general strike has been called for Wednesday. Greece agreed on Sunday to slash public spending by $40 billion to secure the loans.

While Greece's economy is relatively small, investors worry that other cash-strapped European governments could follow Greece into asking for emergency loans. Markets have been increasingly skeptical that Europe can act on its own restore the credibility of its shared currency, the euro.

"Everybody is worried about who is going to be next," said Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York.

The euro again fell against the dollar as traders turned away from the currency, which is used by 16 European Union countries including Greece. The euro hit its lowest level in a year. Investors have punished the euro over the past few months over doubts that Europe would be able to enforce fiscal discipline in Greece and other weak countries in the region in order to protect the euro.

The rising dollar is a negative for U.S. investors since it would cut into profits for U.S. companies that heavily rely on foreign operations. When the dollar is up, overseas profits translate into less money. The strong dollar also sends prices for basic materials like oil higher, which hurts manufacturing companies.

In late morning trading, the Dow fell 255.60, or 2.3 percent, to 10,896.23. It is the Dow's fifth move of more than 100 points in the past six days. The Dow jumped 143 points Monday after sliding 159 on Friday.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 29.83, or 2.5 percent, to 1,172.43. The Nasdaq composite index fell 80.33, or 3.2 percent, to 2,418.41.

Investors rushed to safety holdings like Treasurys, pushing down yields. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.62 percent from 3.69 percent late Monday.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange's Volatility Index, which is known as the market's fear gauge, soared 21 percent. That is a signal that more investors are betting on big drops in the market.

The dollar rose against other major currencies, especially the euro. The euro sank as low as $1.3038 in New York, its weakest point since April 2009. It was worth $1.3212 late Monday and had traded as high as $1.51 last November, before the extent of Greece's debt crunch had become apparent.

Crude oil fell to $2.70 to $83.49 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Stronger economic reports were of little help to stocks.

The Commerce Department said orders to U.S. factories rose 1.3 percent in March. Analysts expected a drop. The National Association of Realtors said its index of sales agreements for previously occupied homes rose a stronger-than-expected 5.3 percent in March.

About six stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 400 million shares compared with 302 million traded at the same point Monday.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 20.06, or 2.7 percent, to 712.76.

In afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 1.8 percent, Germany's DAX index dropped 2.5 percent, and France's CAC-40 tumbled 3.5 percent.