LOL the tide has not even gone out yet. One needs not watch the tide to go out to see the fat whales that will be beach ridden. One only need look at where the fake central bank and socialist actions of the government has been focused the last 7 years. Where capitalism is thwarted rot, waste, and corruption breed.

Agreed. Europe sooner or later has to deal with the overspending socialism they are addicted to, save Germany. In the meantime, Russia would like to tromp over all Eastern Europe and make the rest of Europe quake in fear even if it means economic self annihilation. The last thing they need is QE which doomed Japan and is now swallowing the US. Really, has socialism won the cold war? It seems increasingly that way.

The only reason the real estate market is still alive is because of the government which has socialized all but the high end with Fannie and Freddie. I wouldn't buy real estate now for the same reason I wouldn't buy Russian stocks. A socialized market is a dumb one to be in.

I do agree that the financial houses seem to be calling for a market recovery while secretly betting against it. Likewise, the Federal Reserve has been acting like a major collapse is on its way yet for the past 4 years has been claiming a strong recovery is around the corner. I stopped listening to both years ago. The only reason a cyclical downturn hasn't happened is due to the financial wizardry that allows the central bank to make money for their friends and the central government that allows massive overspending and protects banking from following even the most rational accounting laws like mark to market and helping TBTF banks get bigger so their assets remain impossible to value.

The Federal Reserve has always before now tried to be neutral for fear of manipulating markets and spurring bubbles in them although they seem to have a long term agenda at keeping gold and silver low to prevent the appearance of inflation. There are many papers written on the Federal Reserve's not only to plunge protect the stock market but direct the primary dealer banks and TBTF banks into investing in the stock market. This is not impartial in the least, if anything it's a purposeful attempt at making an artificial bubble to make people feel artificially wealthier as long as it lasts.

Comex is losing its market due to a perception that it is not reliable or honest. Thus China and others are asking for their precious metals in real bars and are setting up their own exchanges. Given, it's a great way to make money off of gold and silver you don't have, but its a terrible way of assuring you get gold or silver when you buy it and it is questionable if you store it there that you will ever get it back.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Mainly banks and financial wizards bet first on such commodities given there was not much else to invest in with such low rates and high risk. It then permutated into derivatives and into stocks and derivatives. It will inevitably end in bonds that rapidly become junk that these companies used to finance needless growth in production assuming the artificial demand and prices would remain that was created to be a store of value rather than consumed. Oil, gas, steel, copper, gold, silver, etc. were all part and parcel of creating an oversupply so that a few could hold it as a store of value rather than consume it. Now that they are becoming storehouses of losses they are finding their way back to a massively oversupplied market that produces way too much even without these stashes being dumped.

What do you do with oil when there is no where to store it. Sadly this is the simple fact of today. There is literally nowhere to stick the excess supply besides the national reserves which is just dumping the oil back into the ground.

LOL China has zombie factories and the US has zombie banks. In reality, the zombie banks are a bigger issue, especially since they are guaranteed by the taxpayer and they are gambling the money away rather than lending it. The amount of TBTF bank self investment has grown more than 50% since the last downturn making China's 50% increase in non-performing loans seem like no big deal.

Fortunately China continues to deal with its losses as their economy grows, whereas the US growth is almost all do to Federal Reserve money games, bubble blowing schemes like plunge protecting stocks so the assets get overvalued, and US deficits.

Companies that constantly depend on acquisitions top offset their poor performance are not buys even when they do buy good companies usually because they destroy the better systems in the companies they buy. Medical companies and biotecs are a bit different because a good product can be taken and sold without worrying as much about the rotting corpse that is left over from the acquisition. However, Stryker is big enough that there is less and less they can buy to help them. If you don't like Stryker don't buy them with or without this merger. Not much will change.

The US need not nor should link their economy to the EU, Japan, or anyone else. It is tragic that the US has delved head on into a central bank managed economy already. We certainly don't want to cement that. First revoke QE save limited timeframes and only upon legislative approval to at least make it constitutional. Second bar the Federal Reserve from directing banks to where to invest assets besides US securities. The central banks should not be fixing markets and then refusing to disclose to elected officials.

Last, all the other countries should agree on one thing and one thing only to improve global economics. Ratchet down socialistic and government spending and embrace the free market. After that they can discuss working together although they won't have as many issues as they have now. Even if their is coordinated action by member countries, not much can be done while all are hemorrhaging from the ill effects of over regulated economies, fixed markets, massive debt, and socialist systems that distort the real market.