SAR #8302

It should be called the Dow Jones Gullibility Index.

110º In the Shade: Everybody's excited. The bottom was reached and the march upward to infinity and beyond has begun! Or is it just a whole lot of shorts being covered?

Trimming the Hedges: Porsche said it owned 74% of VW (through derivatives). Lower Saxony owns 20%, leaving only 5% of VW's shares available. Hedge funds scrabbled to cover their shorts, briefly driving VW stock from €210 to over €1,000, which made VW worth more than Exxon. It also made hedge funds worth €20 billion less and the DAX rise 7%.

Privateers: Blackwater is being hired to fight pirates off the coast of Somalia. Takes one to know one.

Juvenile Delinquents: At the end of August, serious delinquencies - defined as those 90 or more days delinquent, in foreclosure, or REO - made up 23% of all active mortgages, up from 18% three months before, while 30 and 60 day delinquencies are also on the rise.

Cousins: The EPA's new rules let power plants increase carbon emissions while ignoring pollution controls. This is not a repeat item, it just bears a family resemblance to other Bush administration parting gifts to environmental rapists.

Street Sweeper II: The Pentagon is wants a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" - taser-armed robots designed to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human." Curfew violators, protesters, Unitarians...

Nose Plugs: Over 22% of First Federal's $4.5 billion loan portfolio is underwater. And it's not the poor folks: The higher the LTV, the higher the delinquency rate. Moody's estimates there are now 12 million underwater mortgages, headed for 20 million. SCUBA lessons anyone?

Hard Times: Bankruptcies, takeovers and miserable performances (not to mention common decency or common sense) will not stop Santa from delivering $20 billion in bonuses to Wall Street. Whatever happened to the old lump of coal?

Trendy: In addition to the obligatory kosher salt, pink salt, black salt, and sea salt, now comes the latest fad: climate change salt. Scientists report a significant change in the saltiness of ocean water is endangering the sea's chain of life, and attribute it to CO2 driven climate change.

The Biggest Loser: Globalization is turning out to be the biggest bubble. Worldwide shipping - the heart of globalization - has fallen off the table. The 90% fall in the cost of shipping stuff indicates that stuff isn't being shipped.

Pig In a Poke: Pakistan's leadership has accepted the IMF's terms for a bailout, setting the stage for a replay of the economic rape described in Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. The Ukraine , too, has sold its soul for $16.5 billion. History shows that the objective the IMF/World Bank overseers is the looting of resources from their victims.

Seasonal Adjustment: Retailers keep teaching customers bad habits. First they taught us to wait until nearly Christmas for the markdowns. Then it was Black Friday. Now they're starting the big markdowns right after Halloween. Shop your favorite store early, it might not be around come December.

Porn O'Graph: State tax (non) collections.