Monday, November 7, 2011

Twisting in the Wind . . .

The U.S. stock market is not in control of itself.  It is twisting in the wind, blown by breezes out of Europe.  Nobody knows what the Greek outcome will be.  We can see what increased political instability in Greece is doing to stock markets worldwide.  Now, political instability is rising rapidly in Italy, which is "too big to fail."

Overnight, Asia was down almost 1%.  Europe is now down almost 2%.  At 5AM, futures indicate the Dow will lose about 130 points at the 9:30AM open.  It could be a long day.

Meanwhile, back at home, America keeps lumbering along, growing slowly, producing some jobs, but burdened with political impotence, not political instability.  We actually look pretty good, relatively speaking.

Important economic data from China, the world's growth engine, will come out on Wednesday and Thursday, which will give us something non-European to fixate on.  We need the Chinese to do well, to save the world from Greece and Italy and Spain and Portugal and . . . ?