View: Bonjour from Bretagne, France.......(Evil Plan 43.0 by BDI) - Slop...

Just wanted to say a quick hello to my fellow Slope-a-Dopes from la belle France.  I'm in Bretagne for a couple of weeks hanging with my cousins.  I just had to get away from the markets for a while.  I have been so dead wrong for the past 2 months that I needed a break.  

Still can't believe so many market participants are actually buying into this liquidity death march to oblivion.  Surely everyone knows that we are playing with fire here, childishly hiding from, and not willing to face up to the stark reality of unsustainable and mostly contrived growth, which has been generated by yet even more bogus debt financing, via the cowardly acceptance of further reckless & dubious financial engineering.  Not once in my life, have I experienced that doing the exact same thing that got me into trouble, will get me out of that trouble.  My incessant shorting of the QQQs over the past 4 weeks, surely underscores this dictum. That's enough market talk, I'm here supposed to be getting away from it all..........

So far, I have mostly been taking long walks in the serene country side with my Aunt & Uncle.  We reverse course once we reach the cliffs of Bretagne, over looking the seascape below, which give you fantastic open views of the vast endless ocean.   This evening as the sun sets over the Atlantic, I am writing this brief post from my Uncle's desk top computer.  I decided before I left, not to take my digital camera, nor my net-book with me.  I wanted these few weeks to be sort of a silent retreat, putting the incessant buzzing of the digital age in the off line mode for a while, seemed like a good idea. It was time to recharge my human batteries, as opposed to constantly recharging those of the electronic gizmo's which dominate much of our modern time. Thus, the digital images chosen here, are not mine, but are the ones that best represent where I am. 

Tomorrow I will be dining with a few of my younger French cousins in town. I'm sure after we catch up on life, we will most likely talk French presidential politics, and maybe even some European Union economics. These guys are fierce nationalist up here in Brittany.  No Van Rompuy for you!  

As far as the markets are concerned, as you know, I rolled forward & loaded up on a fresh batch of QQQ DOOMs before I left, both the weekly and March monthly OTM puts.  I figure if our financial wizards, can do the same thing over and over again, with spectacular success, why not me;-)

Many mine fields still out there which could upset this rotten apple cart: 

Keep an eye out for Spain, which decided over the weekend, not to play ball with the new rigid EU budgetary doctrine, which was signed only this past Friday, with much fanfare.  Stunningly, Spain's President Mariano Rajoy announced yesterday, that he would bust the EU budget treaty deal on day one. The ink was not even dry yet on the proud new EU document, and yet the fourth largest member country is already defying its strict fiscal mandates. Not a good start. 

Also, you may want to watch out for the conclusion of PSI / CAC negotiations.  This may not be the clean pristine done deal we have been lead to believe.  If only 26% of the private investors balk, the CDS could very well trigger.  BadaBoom! 

Not to mention, the Oil price explosion, which may be just in its infancy.  Israel is itching to bomb Iran, and the tightening of the USA/EU sanctions, seems to have only served to bring political victory for more hard liners in the Iranian Parliament last week.  

The price of petrol in this quaint little French town has NEVER been higher, and the natives are restless, Sarkozy is finished. And guess what?  Francois Hollande, may well win the French presidential elections this May.  The very nervous conservative leaders of Britain, Germany, and Italy have all agreed not to meet him, or even be publicly seen with Hollande because of his promise to renegotiate the EU stability pact.

So you see, all is still not well in the old continent. Les jeux sont faits!

Evil Plan 43.0 direct from France.

  BDI SOH's Idiot Savant