U.S. DOLLAR TRADERS, MIND THAT ASTEROID "This is the end of the Armageddon trade." - Douglas Roberts, chief investment strategist for ChannelCapitalResearch.com, suggests that the U.S. dollar is no longer considered a safe-haven investment. The dollar rallied sharply between mid-September of last year and the beginning of March and has weakened rapidly this month.
SPEAKING OF THE DOLLAR'S COLLAPSE... "I believe deeply that it's very important to the United States, to the economic health of the United States, that we maintain a strong dollar." - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tells journalists in Asia as the greenback continues to slide and as Washington does, well, nothing, to strengthen it.
AND SPEAKING OF COLLAPSE... "What I see now is the end of a paradigm that is as cataclysmic as the asteroid event that killed almost all the life on Earth, and certainly the dinosaurs." - Michael Ruppert, a former LAPD officer and investigative journalist, in "Collapse," a movie being released Friday, about running out of oil. Has this man been talking to Jeff Rubin?
PLEASE, SIR, CAN I HAVE SOME MORE? "Trading gas and oil is our drug. People can't get enough of it, even when prices are going through the roof" - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a Der Spiegel interview.
TOO MUCH STUFF "We see an economy characterized by an excess supply of goods, an excess supply of labor and an excess supply of credit," - Wells Fargo chief economist John Silvia bemoans "disappointing, subpar growth" in a report on the U.S. economy.
Many of the major indexes have climbed recently, but analysts disagree about the strength of that recovery. What do you think?