Welcome to the final TSS weekly commentary of the year. I’m taking a couple of weeks off for the holidays because repeating myself week after week fifty times a year is tiresome, and not just for the reader.

For those of you figuring that with it being the last issue of the year, I’ll make a special effort to go out of 2004 with a bang and finally say something of great insight, go figure some more. I considered doing so, but then I’d have too tough an act to follow in 2005. So welcome to more of the same repetitive drivel you’ve come to love and expect.

(more…)

Stocks fell slightly last week, ending a somewhat volatile week barely changed. The sad and down-trodden dollar finally managed to stop falling, although relatively speaking, to suggest that it rallied would be a stretch. Gold got hammered but continues to do better than the dollar could even dream of doing and crude oil continued lower.

Into the final stretch of the year and neck-deep into the most important shopping season of the year, the economic folks are starting to worry. Retailers aren’t reporting much in the way of good news and even Walmart is complaining. I say if you can’t sell bucket loads of cheap imported garbage to folks whose sole pastime is buying bucket loads of cheap imported garbage, it’s time to worry.

(more…)

For those of you who “live in a van down by the river” and didn’t hear the news, the dollar continued to skid lower last week. The U.S. Dollar Index hit a 9-1/2 year low and now stands within easy striking distance of its lowest low ever. But there’s some good news: I suspect we won’t have a dollar crisis.

Blasphemy! How can someone who has spent the better part of the past few years going on and on about how sorry the dollar is, how precarious and imbalanced is our financial situation, possibly suggest that the worst case scenario is not 100% certain?

(more…)