Greece in Tatters, US Still in Denial

As Greece burns, global stock markets reel in terror.

It's really about time that the oligarchs running the show down on Wall Street come to the realization the most of the rest of the world isn't buying their load of bull hockey any more and investors are making their displeasure known by their feet, fleeing overpriced, overhyped, intangible assets as quickly as they can.

If the shakeout of small investors wasn't complete in the Fall of 2008 and the Winter of 2009, then this is to be expected. There are a myriad of reasons stocks should be sold off. Here's a small ticking off of the major bullet points:

• Incomes haven't risen in years, though the price of everything from food to rent to heating fuel has doubled in some cases.
• Maybe Americans are a little bit tired of killing themselves at low-wage jobs just to buy gas at upwards of $3.50 a gallon.
• Speaking of jobs, there aren't any.
• Americans are sick of bailouts of the banks which caused this crisis.
• Americans are sick of bankers getting enormous bonuses for abject failure.
• Americans are sick of a federal government that keeps putting us deeper and deeper in debt.
• Americans are sick and tired of the Fed devaluing the currency and causing global inflation.
• Americans are sick and tired of the casino-like atmosphere on Wall Street, controlled by a very few insiders with guarantees of non-failure, not to mention the insider trading, HFTs, front-running, bond-flipping and all the rest of the improper accounting tricks and bogus schemes.
• Americans would like to see Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfien, Angelo Mozillo and many others prosecuted for their crimes, but the US Justice Department has been bought off.
• Iceland defaulted, Ireland is a basket case, Greece is going to default and then Portugal and Spain and Italy should, if only to express outrage at the corrupt Berlusconi government.
• The US government is horribly corrupt as well and default is headed for our shores as well, since all the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman know how to do is further impoverish the people of the United States, and, to a lesser degree, the rest of the population of the world.
• Americans are sick of rules, taxes, regulations, heavy-handedness at all levels of government, the continued deprecation of civil liberties, the lies, obfuscation and treachery at the highest levels of government and finance. Americans want the truth, but the politicians and bankers know that they would all be behind bars, or worse, should the truth be known.
• Americans want the government out of their lives, decent jobs, no more wars, no more lying, nothing more.

Is that enough? Because there is more.

Granted the oligarchs of Wall Street and Washington will not listen. They will pose and posture and make statements about what America wants and needs and do nothing of the kind. And the media will bombard us with non-stop presidential politics for the next 18 months, even though half of the population could care less.

While Greece has surely lost the control of the public and all confidence, just as has Ireland and Iceland, and Egypt and Syria and many other countries, the American "establishment" has lost the confidence of its people. It's really that simple. Nobody approves of what goes in on Washington, and thus, nobody abides by them. The US political structure is such a laughing stock that serious people simply ignore it. Add on to that the massive numbers of people who have seen the political and economic systems for what they are and are opting out, dropping out, refusing to comply and bend to the will of the small, wealthy minority who wants to make all the rules, and you have a perfect condition for collapse, the collapse that should have happened three years and $20 trillion of wasted stimulus ago.

The desperation of the elitists is evident from the sour expressions of the paid monkeys on CNBC, who keep insisting that this downturn is temporary or transitory or a "soft patch" in the "recovery." It's hilarious to watch, especially if one is invested in hard goods, precious metals and/or commodities. To put it simply, stocks are for suckers, and the number of suckers still at the table is dwindling, fast.

Dow 11,897.27, -178.84 (1.48%)
NASDAQ 2,631.46, -47.26 (1.76%)
S&P 500 1,265.42, -22.45 (1.74%)
NYSE Composite 7,967.81, -164.96 (2.03%)

The internals told the true story of the devastation. Declining issues outpaced advancers by the largest margin in almost than a year, 5379-1270. NASDAQ recorded 11 new highs and 114 new lows, while the NYSE saw 23 new highs and 79 new lows. The combined total has the new lows ahead for the ninth consecutive session, at just 34 new highs and 193 new lows, with surely more to come.

Volume was actually a little bit perky, especially tantalizing for short sellers and bears.

NASDAQ Volume 1,993,706,125
NYSE Volume 4,653,039,000

As the Greek situation broke down and out, into street protests and young men attacking riot police with sticks, bats and rocks, the dollar became the safe haven currency, smashing crude oil down by $4.68, to $94.81. Oil still has a long way to come down before any kind of supply-demand equilibrium can be maintained. $70 or $60 or even less per barrel are no longer outside targets.

Gold rose modestly as as store of value, up $6.70, to $1530.80. Silver tagged along, gaining 41 cents, to $35.80, though, if stocks continue to slide, they may take other asset classes along with them in a deflationary episode, despite the ongoing efforts by the central banks and the Fed to inflate.

Today's declines took out all of yesterday's gains. Stocks are on track to record their first seven-week losing streak since early 2001, predating 9/11.

Just for fun, tomorrow's traders will have to deal with this week's initial unemployment claims, which will be released an hour prior to the opening bell. It ought to be a doozy.