Italy Is Putting Pressure On The Euro Currency

The Italian market is under a lot of pressure because the Italian government is running deficits that exceed the two percent guidelines imposed by the Eurozone. I think they're proposed new budget deficit is 2.4 percent of Italian GDP and so this is putting pressure on Italy which is all so putting pressure on the euro currency.

We've Had Some Substantial Stock Market Declines In October

We have had some substantial stock market declines in October. Obviously, not every October has a big drop, in fact, most of the October's don't but some of the most notable declines have incurred in the month of October including the crash of 1987 and the crash of 1929. But given that our valuations are probably higher now than they were at those prior peaks you would think that there'd be more concern right now about the possibility of another October surprise in the way of a major decline in the stock market.

U.S. Economy: Soft Landing or Crash Landing?

It's not like the Fed is gonna finally see a small reaction to one rate hike that will enable them to quickly reverse course and engineer this soft landing that everybody likes to talk about. The minute there is a problem from the rate hikes it's gonna be a crash landing. There's going to be no opportunity to try to soft land this thing because as soon as it goes down it's going to come crashing down even if the Fed immediately goes from whatever they've raised rates to, to zero and launches another round of quantitative easing it's not going to be in time to stop the damage.