Not unexpected, but the budget deficit jumped 10% because taxes have fallen to a 14 year low.

Like I said, the solution here is inflation to wipe out bad debts, and the deficits are going to do that sooner rather than later, because we’re not going to see a this resolve itself in the US, or overseas in the near future, as evidence by the cratering confidence numbers globally.

With Chinese exports falling sharply, 25.7% year over year, and the rest of the world seeing similar numbers, they are in no position to drive a recovery either.

Consumers are vanishing worldwide, and there is no sign of a recovery in the US, particularly in real estate, where S&P is warning of downgrades of, “9,430 classes from 1,077 U.S. first-lien Alt-A RMBS transactions issued in 2005, 2006, and 2007”, and builder loans threatening to take down banks that weren’t playing with funky financial instruments.

On the brighter side, it looks like the SEC might reinstitute the ‘Uptick Rule’ on short selling.

I’d like to see aggressive prosecution of market manipulation techniques like “naked” short selling too, but I am not holding my breath.

If Wall Street were investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald, I’m pretty sure that you would see tens of thousands of prosecutions.

In energy, the week economy has driven oil down.

Also, it appears that there are more stupid people than I thought, because the dollar fell as people left its safe haven, it appears that this was largely a result of Pandit’s delusional memo saying that Citi is going to rake in the bucks this quarter.