Bubble bubble toil and trouble.

If someone could please explain the stock market to me I would appreciate it. It makes no sense that it continues to rise given the situation we appear to be in as a nation. We can't go on without other people's oil - (yes, Virginia, the WAR WAS ABOUT OIL) and we can't go on without out other people's cash. ( Special thanks to China and Japan) And yet - onward the market marches. My favorite cranky old white guy has some thoughts on it here. Money quote: Doug Noland over at Prudent Bear.com is right: we've entered a euphoric phase of financial arbitrage capitalism with extreme Ponzi overtones, a pyramid scheme of revolving credit rackets and percentage spread plays completely abstracted from any reality of fruitful activity. The reason we don't even call "money" by its former name anymore is precisely because we realize at some semi-conscious level that "liquidity" is not really money.

While eviscerating Paul Whatzawitz over at the World Bank Pat Buchanan says this:
This is not 1945. America is no longer the world's greatest creditor. She is the world's greatest debtor. In 2006, our current account deficit hit $857 billion. Beijing sits atop a mountain of $1 trillion in reserves. Japan sits on $850 billion. U.S. reserves are pitiful.

and yet the market rises...

Note: P.B. also throws in an anti-Semitic cue word (parasite) for his fellow travelers. It is so easy to take Wolfowitz down without walking right up to the edge of bigotry. Take him down because he is an arrogant, incompetent asshole - like most of those creepy people that "Bush has confidence in."