Thursday, December 1, 2011

All (Fish) Hands On Deck

Ever been fishing?  After you snag and reel 'em in, fish behave like they were internally loaded with some kind of inertia driven Newtonian spring.  Equal and opposite explosions of energy produce irrepressible flips after flops and flips after flops, until they're finally unhooked, only to be thrown on the ice.  And that's the way it goes, or my name isn't (Willard) Mitt Romney.  Oh, wait, that's another subject.  Back to the fish.

You may be among those smiling at the recent reports of high consumer spending over the "Black Friday" weekend, and the near 500 point leap of the stock market yesterday.  That's understandable.  What's a lot tougher to see is any good reason for the good news.  Is the larder really being reloaded, or is everyone being baited?

Wall Street was sucked into a feeding frenzy over the much ballyhooed and overrated (please read Paul Krugman and baseline scenario blog sites for factual information on the Eurozone crisis) announcement by the Central Banks of England, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and the U.S. that they stand ready to lend the European Central Bank (ECB) all the dollars it wants at a more attractive rate than the almost zero interest which was already being offered prior to the "big announcement."  Go figure what real help that could be, given the inability of the ECB to act aggressively while in the death grip of Germany; my guess is zip.  As for the consumer binge to match the Thanksgiving feasting, well that's what holidays are all about.  But the rest of the year comes on.

Personally, I see or feel no inrush of a flood tide from which the parching fish gills can extract life-giving oxygen.  Be careful not to get hooked into queuing up for the gutting, scaling, and skinning, like so many who've been baited before.

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