An Ugly Week

To say this has been a difficult week is an understatement.

If you know me, you know I manage an investment firm, Perennial Research LLC. To try to manage a hedge fund during these past 10 days has been as trying and stressful a time as I can remember.

It all started with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout, and then quickly spiraled into the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the Merrill Lynch rescue by BofA, the government bailout of AIG, the creation of an Uber-RTC fund with which the US Government (i.e. taxpayers) will assume the ownership (i.e. liabilities) of every toxic debt instrument currently on the balance sheet of every American bank, and, to top it all off, an outright ban on short-selling by the SEC.

And the crash has not even occurred yet.

So many questions to ponder right now. So little time to digest it.

The good folks at Minyanville, with whom I've been a subscribing member for just a few weeks, have been making some sense of it. I must say, for myself, I agree with Todd Harrison's assessment-- a very sad chapter in American history is opening.

The good folks at Elliott Wave International, with whom I've been a subscribing member for a few years, have been forecasting this very occurrence. Their wave counts have proven invaluable to me these past few days. I must admit I've never really wanted to believe in Robert Prechter's long-range forecasts, but here we are.

Tomorrow I'm off to see the good folks at ASPO-USA, with whom I've been a member for two years. They are holding their 2008 Peak Oil Conference in Sacramento, CA, which kicks off Sunday. I am looking forward to the "diversion". More on this later.