Horrible Day

• Typical bear action.  High volume selling on the bad days, low volume buying on the good days.  No reversal today whatsoever.  The down trend continues.
• Getting the blame?  Lack of jobs and European debt.  A flood of bad news, including rising debt levels in European nations and an unexpected jump in the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits, had investors pulling money out of assets like stocks and commodities that are looking increasingly risky.
• What about American debt?  President Obama and previously President Bush have not been shy about running up your deficit.  The debt ceiling was just raised to over $14 trillion.  President Obama’s budget has over a trillion dollars in deficits as far as the eye can see.  Interest has to be paid on that every year.  The amount of money paid in interest on the national debt is consuming a larger and larger percentage of the federal budget.  At what point does that become a problem?  Maybe that’s now.
• I don’t want to jump on the doomsday bandwagon, which many do after the market goes down a few percent.  But, the deficits at the federal, state and local levels seem to be a systemic problem.
• I expect to see more government employee layoffs:  Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has ordered the immediate layoffs of 1,000 city employees to help to balance the city's budget.
• A guide to the Super Bowl.
• Seems to me the no brainer is the Colts and the over, so I went the other way and took the Saints and the under.