MarketRant: USRant: Smirking To Financial Ruin...

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Smirky "Arbusto" McChimpleton never met a government handout he didn't like. When Shrubbie was failing as an oil man his Daddy (President George II [George I was Washington]) organised a bailout, and when Shrubbie wanted to be a baseball magnate the political cronies organised the construction of a stadium at taxpayers' expense.

So no surprises that he reaches for the government cheque book as soon as the effects start to become evident of the wanton waste of public money on Chimpy McAwol's slaughtering of brown children who live on top of oil.

Today the Coward in Chief held one of his rare press conferences, and the noises in his earpiece told him to tell the journalists that the gummint was gunna stimulify the conomy. The stimularisin' is likely to prove as elusive as those nookular weapons that Saddama Bin Laden had in Iraqistan; the US government is already running a near-record deficit, and further deterioration of the public balance sheet in the quest for a short term pop in expenditure to herald the end of McChimpleton's reign.

That's the problem with measuring prosperity based on how much you're able to spend in a given timeframe... it takes zero account of the damage you do to your balance sheet. But it's the way that politicians love to measure things, because the expenditure buys them votes now, and the ramifications can always be blamed on immigrant Mexicans or Saudi dissidents.

Plus, $190 billion is stuff all - even if it was all spent within minutes of the cheques arriving, it amounts to less than has already been written off during the ongoing subprime fallout... and that is less than 10% over. By the end, the banks will have to write off a trillion dollars, and maybe a trill and a half.

Economic News

Mixed economic data today -

Conference Board Leading Indicators came in at 0.2%, weaker than the consensus estimate of -0.1%; and
The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index was stronger than expected, with a reading of 80.5 compared with a consensus guess of 74.7

Fed Open Market Operations

The Fed continues to refuse to fill the punch-bowl. Today they did a single repurchase operation - a $3.5billion 5-day repurchase operation, with only $800 million in Treasury-backed collateral.

Headline Indices

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 59.91 points (0.49%) to 12099.30 points. The index high for the day was 12341.54, set at about 10:15 a.m.; shortly thereafter the Dowager commenced a 300-point swan-dive which was unrelenting, and which lasted until five minutes before noon. The actual low print for the session was set at 2:50 p.m., at 12022.73 - but it was not that much lower than the 12025-odd that was registered just before noon.

Of the 30 Dow components, 19 fell for the day and 11 rose. The main culprits on the declining side of the ledger were

Verizon, down 1.82 *4.45%) to $39.09 on volume just shy of 39.7 million shares;
AIG, down $2.22 (4.09%) to $52.05 on volume of 38.1 million shares; and
AT&T, down $1.19 (3.19%) to $36.11 on volume of 48.3 million units.

The S&P500 Index lost 8.06 points (0.6%) to 1325.19 points.

The Nasdaq Composite lost 6.88 points (0.29%) to 2340.02 points, while Nasdaq100 managed a minuscule gain, rising 1.99 points (0.11%) to 1844.09 points.

The CBOE Volatiity Index lost 0.91 points (3.2%) to 27.55 points; the CBOE Nasdaq100 Volatility Index lost 0.65 points (2.09%) to 30.51 points.

NYSE Total Volume totalled 5.93 billion units. The 1220 rising NYSE stocks traded a total of 2.4 billion shares, while 3.5 billion shares were traded in the 2137 decliners. Only 13 NYSE stocks made new 52-week highs, and a whopping 634 plumbed new 1-year depths.

Nasdaq Total Volume totalled 2.94billion units; Among the Nasdaq stocks, 1107 rose, and 1936 fell for the session. Gainers traded a total of 1.05 billion shares, with 1.84 billion traded in the session's losers..

Major Market Statistics
Index	Close	Gain(Loss)	%
Dow Jones Industrial Average	12099.30	59.91	0.49%
S&P500 Index	1325.19	8.06	0.6%
Nasdaq Composite	2340.02	6.88	0.29%
Nasdaq100	1844.09	1.99	0.11%
CBOE Volatiity Index	27.55	0.91	3.2%
CBOE Nasdaq100 Volatility Index	30.51	0.65	2.09%
NYSE Total Volume	5.93bn	-	-
Nasdaq Total Volume	2.94bn	-	-

Bellwethers

The nine-stock group that makes up the Rant bellwethers declined on average by 1.3%. The fallout occurred as follows:

General Electric (GE) up $+1.10 (3.31%) to $34.31 on volume of 91.94 million units.
Citigroup (C) down $0.51 (2.04%) to $24.45 on volume of 189.31 million units.
Wal-Mart (WMT) up $+0.10 (0.21%) to $47.58 on volume of 32.84 million units.
IBM (IBM) up $+1.99 (1.97%) to $103.09 on volume of 23.03 million units.
Intel (INTC) down $0.33 (1.71%) to $19.00 on volume of 142.48 million units.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) down $0.03 (0.12%) to $24.30 on volume of 92.69 million units.
Google (GOOG) down $0.54 (0.09%) to $600.25 on volume of 8.42 million units.
Fannie Mae (FNM) down $2.85 (8.14%) to $32.15 on volume of 23.61 million units.
Freddie Mac (FRE) down $1.42 (4.88%) to $27.66 on volume of 20.32 million units.

Other Indices of Interest...

The Banks Index lost 1.14 (1.47%) to 77.61 points. Index volume totalled 593.4 million shares. Of the 24 index components, 6 advanced, with volume in advancers totalling 94.6 million units. Of the remaining 18 stocks in the index, 17 fell, with total volume traded of 478.5 million shares.