All by Tom Toles, my favourite cartoonist.

Making the case for not bailing out California.

From Bloomberg.

The euro has achieved a 50% retracement of its move from $1.60 to $1.23.  I never got into my euro short call I made some time back.  I will be watching it closely for an entry point, which I suspect will be sometime in the new year as opportunities arise to sell stocks.

One has to be very heartened by the move in gold and silver if one is a precious metals bull.  If one shorts the euro against the dollar, I would not necessarily expect gold and silver to hold up.

I am sure you all have heard by now that the Fed cut the Fed funds target to the nifty range of 0%-0.25%.  Free money!  That's awesome.

In effect, all the Fed was doing was taking the target down to where Fed funds have been trading anyways.  I have been watching Fed funds the past while and I cannot remember the last time it traded at 1%. It has been several weeks at least.  Fed fund were trading as low as 0.0625% within the past few days.

DealBreaker, analogizing the Fed's interest rate policy of 0%.

There are ridiculous things occurring in the municipal bond market.

Why?  Because gold is carried on the Fed's books at $42 an ounce.  I cannot remember the last time gold was $42 an ounce. 

From GATA

Interviewed Monday this week on the "Trading Day" program of Business News Network in Canada, former Federal Reserve Governor Lyle Gramley hinted that a big upward revaluation of gold may figure heavily in the Fed's attempt to rescue the U.S. economy.

From Business Pundit, via Financial Ninja

From Bespoke Group.

Gee, I'm feeling a little guilty ripping off so much of Bespoke's stuff lately.  I'll have to put them in my blogroll.