Bogleheads

[Rose21]

Someone, apparently someone in Asia, wants dollars. A LOT of dollars. There is a forced-liquidation event underway that is massive, it is against all asset classes and it is spreading.

It originated at approximately 7:15 CT this evening and originated out of Asia somewhere. All of the primary currency crosses got hit at once - Euro, Pound, Yen - all weakened dramatically against the dollar and it is still going on. The Asian stock markets got walloped at the same time in coordinated waves of forced selling.

At the same time the US futures markets got nailed as well, down some six handles on the /ES in a near-vertical drop. While this sounds "not that big" to move these markets in a coordinated fashion like this is a trillion-dollar enterprise - this is not some small company that went bankrupt, or even a large company.

There is no news coverage at the present time identifying the source of this but it is not small and contrary to some reports it is not "automatic selling"; this is forced liquidation.

Folks, if this translates into Eastern Europe where there are severe instabilities already brewing literally everything in the financial world could come apart "all at once."

http://market-ticker.org/

[Pacific]

Maybe George Soros is at work?

[Rose21]

Some discussion here: http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi....post=83460

[grumel]

Eastern European curencies colapsing? That would be very good for my holiday budget. The good news never stop these days, every thing gets cheaper. Oil, groceries, computers, houses.....

[blackball]

I don't see anything happening against the C$...boring...wake me up if it moves more than a cent

[tfb]

[Rose21]

E-mini futures. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/emini.asp

[Cherokee8215]

I know almost nothing about international currency exchange, etc. but wouldn't other countries clammoring for USD dollars be a good thing for the US?

[tetractys]

[astroturf]

I believe this current Bloomberg story summarizes the situation.

Euro Falls to 10-Week Low on Concern Europe’s Turmoil to Worsen
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/....r=currency

It includes this little gem:

[SkylightMT]

Seems to be slowing down/leveling off now.

[trom]

[hewhomustnotbenamed]

[grayfox]

Excellent. My plan is coming together.

[Diablo-D3]

Did we just watch the US economy reboot itself?

[nick22]

What, you can't drink at the G-7 summit? At least he didn't puke on the Japanese Prime Minister, because a stunt like that would be realy embarrasing (I am thinking of you POTUS 41).

So some Eastern European rebusblic like Georgia can move the needle on financial markets? Really? Maybe it is just the Harvard endowment going to cash?
_________________
Nick22

[pooo98]

I don't sleep well, hence I often see the Bloomburg ticker at various times, during the night.

I saw the sell off, you may be referring to. It seems to me I recall the words "triggered stop lossess" but I am sorry - I saw nothing big and bad a scary. What I saw was sad to me.

It looked like the Euro is on a low, for this current cyle - does this surprise anyone? Not me. It is still 25% higher then it's launch 10 years ago. It looked to me as if all equity markets sold off, but the only surprise to me here, was the China market going down (because it's the only one that has been going up - which had seemed a tad irrational to me). It looks like the equity markets are headed to their lows - and this also, is no surprise to me. Will they break those lows and go on down another 20-30% --- well, if they do, that ought not be a huge surprise to anyone either.

What I saw was sad, not big and bad an scary.

Is there all kinds of possible awful busines, or geo-political realities sprinkled like candy, all over the world - there sure is. Is there all sorts of possible bigger, badder instabilities beyond having enough to buy the food to put in your mouth - there sure is.

Is something hugely bad happing over night? Not that I know of.

We have seen a parade of corupt governers. We have seen a parade of fraudulent hedge fund managers. That home mortgage thing is so weird - it is hard for any reasonable person to point to exactly where the misdoings were, as they seem to have been everywhere, at every level.

What we haven't seen yet - is huge corporate misdeeds, perhaps even criminal misdeeds, perhaps even crooks going to jail. It is almost inconceivable to me that we get to the other side, and not see some of this garbage also.

I pray us humans won't blow up the planet. I fear, that is precisely what this will end up as. Did it start last night? I don't think so. If it did, we don't know about it yet. Thus, the sun will come up on my home.
pooo98

[theduke]

Maybe Bernie Madoff is just shifting around some money.

[btenny]

Maybe the Japanese government and housewives and many others are buying dollars and dumping Yen out of fear and an effort to lower the Yen vs the dollar so their products are cheaper making them better exporters. What I saw on TV last night in Toyko with homeless sleeping in the streets has to be a real BIG issue in Japan. They have not had that since WWII and before. They will do something to fix that. Their society just does not accomodate this. They just do not know how to deal with that much bad stuff after 20 years of trouble in their banks, etc... Plus with their own huge government debts there is a lot of economic theory that says the housewives should convert lots of money to dollars as our currency is stronger due to less debt.

Maybe???

Bill

[Valuethinker]

[richard]

[Alistair]

China.

[grayfox]

Isn't China really the problem behind this world economic crisis?
They manufacturer everything but buy nothing.
Maybe they buy raw materials and machine tools, but they don't buy consumer goods which is the end product.
I read somewhere that Consumer is only 30% of their GDP (70% for U.S.) and their savings rate is like 50% (was -5% for U.S.)

There was that NPR radio show about the giant pool money that was looking for a return. That amount of money available doubled in only a few years, so Wall Street invented all those bogus securities to sell them. Well China is where all the new money came from.

And if it is China, then isn't Walmart ultimately the cause of the economic crisis. Ship all the factories and jobs to China. Now China has all the producers and the U.S has all the consumers. In China the money piles up, and in America the debt piles up. How can that be stable?

[muck53]

[grayfox]

Very good insight into the present model for world economy.

Did someone actually plan for the world to become so specialized, or did it just occur naturally? How did it come about?
Was the idea of the wealthiest nation becoming the largest debtor nation somebody's grand scheme? Who is behind this?

[muck53]

[sgr000]

[grumel]

China is just an easy target for populist diversion tactics.
If Chinese merkantilism would be the problem, everyone else would have a big foreign trade deficit, not just one country.

[FafnerMorell]

[baw703916]