Wheels coming off?

Bye, bye Money... sniff.

Now, I would love to deflect the seriousness of the economic troubles we've seen so far and what seems to be coming "down the pike," with sarcasm. Would that it'd work to stave off the jittery nervousness...

Today was a bad day at the international, craps table. Even relatively calm, staid even, investors are getting a wee bit dodgy. I'm not liking the looks of this slow-motion train wreck one little bit.

I had to liquidate my paltry 401(k) a few years ago, so I don't have much dough on the table. Though, I can just imagine how painful it must be for others who were contemplating retirement in the next few years... it's almost as if the timing is just too coincidental to be, well, simply coincidental.

To see your portfolio value drop by double digit percentage points every quarter must be at minimum, disconcerting...

There are a dozen or so "baby boomers," in my office that seriously were plotting retirement in the next 5 years ... they are the ones that look the most worried. As, likely, they should. It's global.

A friend e-mailed me about how she was pleased that it costs her much less to commute to work. She's right of course, for her, the crash in the price of petrol is great for her personally, but what it is really, is the clearest sign that global economic activity is, while not grinding to a halt, throwing in the towel, but it is certainly squatting on the side of the running track heaving it's guts out and trying to catch it's breath.

This picture is just a slice of the crap sandwich we will all have to start chewing on soon. The above picture is of thousands upon thousands of imported cars that dealerships have no room for... car companies are leasing millions of square feet of warehouse, and concrete space for their inventories (that are approaching record levels, which leads to, eventually, and frighteningly to, dum, dum, duh! Deflation! The ultimate bogeyman in economics).