Predictions... I shouldn't make predictions. They come back to haunt me, generally.
In a lot of ways, it will be very-very-good if this one turns out to be complete bull.
First, a story. Back last winter sometime, I was on a trip with one of the salesdudes from work. Somehow or other we got to talking economics, and of course, I got into the full doom and gloom mode, perhaps with a few conspiracy theories thrown in.
D: "Wow, that's pretty grim. Any kind of a timeline on this?"
C: "I hate to try to predict something like that... not much of a clue."
D: "general idea?"
C: "Next summer. August-ish."
D: "that soon?"
Well, it seems to me that we're in the midst of a soft crisis in the dollar and the economy in general, and at this point, I've decided to record a bit of this.
I have to plant the beginning of this -- or at least the first manifestations of it -- as Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. I don't think many have realized how much trade was disrupted or stopped, and how important that really is.
That was the end of August; the numbers based on it started showing in the end of September, but even then, the inflation numbers from the summer were pretty damn high already.
Inflation... ick.
Things improved for a bit. The dollar got to be quite a bit higher; I missed it somehow. I bet there was some extra fed credit creation; that's the one trick that the fed knows. Extra credit, extra money, raise interest rates, but still create new money.
As of now, the dollar chart shows quite the drop today.
The dow has been down... what, 3 days in a row? The tinfoilhat side of me thinks the plunge protection teeam must have been the only thing stopping the dow from dropping 100 today (only down 33 or so, and it was down 100 this afternoon.)
And from the technical side, (I don't put a lot of stock in analysis like this, but it may have some good points -- like lots of new highs and lows in stocks at the same time being an indication that something isn't healthy,) there has been talk of a Hindenburg Omen.
In general, the number of things that could really cause a dollar/economic collapse seems to be getting higher, and I'd just like to make a note of two of them at the moment.
1) Foreign countries/central banks get rid of their dollars.
2) OPEC starts stops selling oil in dollars.
I hope I'm proven to be a chicken little.
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