If the titan of the Street of Broken Dreams were playing an honest game and not an insider game, one would expect the chart to be more bell shape indicating an even distribution of lost and gain days, since they are only mortal after all. But as you can plainly see the number of days in which Goldbags raked in over 100 million in a single trading day is more than five times the number in which they loss more than that amount. Total number of days of gain is 55 or 84% of the trading days in the quarter. The chart, as economists would say, is skewed.
- US auto sales are about 2/3rds of what dealers made during the earlier par to the decade. In July retailers sold 11.6 million units;
- Retailers are not getting a back to school bounce in sales as sales missed estimates;
- Factory orders fell in June for the second straight month, dropping by 1.2%;
- Fannie Mae the federally chartered mortgage lender is seeking a $1.5 billion loan from the US while under federal conservatorship;
- USPS is seeking an increase in postal rates to cover $3.5 billion loss in the recent quarter due to loss of mail volume and increases in retiree health care costs
- Food stamp use rose to a record 40.8 million in May. Participation in the food aid program has set records for 18 straight months;
- Home sales felt a record low in June. There were a record number of foreclosures in April and May;
- Dollar falls and gold nears record high of over $1200 an ounce, Fed announces purchases of national debt and finally;
- Social Security will pay out more than it takes in for the first time since 1983, the last time it was "fixed".