Flushed Friday!

Oh boy....

Well, let's start with consumer non-confidence.

"Consumer confidence tumbled to its lowest point in nearly 1 1/2 years as a deep housing slump and a credit crunch made people more worried about the country's economic health as well as their own."

I'd say so. 71.1, down from 89.3 last month?! Holy shit! Oh, and you don't want to know what the expectations component was. Ok, you do - 14. Yeah. 14. 50 is "even". Ow.

Oh, then at 10:00 we got a different consumer confidence index - older - that came in ok. Of course the market ignored this one, which was more current, and paid attention to the second.

Remember what I've said about the Equity Markets riding the short bus? You saw that today - in spades. Just wait until they wake up. Hoh hoh hoh Merry Grinchmas!

Oh, and you know the huge pop that GM got yesterday? Hope you sold into that shit. Why? Well, it seems the UAW thinks they're a great strike target if they don't get what they want.

"United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger picked General Motors Corp. as the union's strike target after arguing with the automaker's North American head over funding for a proposed union-run retiree health fund, people with knowledge of the situation said."

What a bunch of crybabies.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have absolutely zero love for the UAW. Zero. They've been responsible for their own problems, along with a big part of what ails GM. When you buy a GM product you actually pay more in the cost of that car or truck for the UAW Retiree's health benefits than you do for steel!

Now perhaps its just me, but the last time I checked this is part of the "debt slave" issue, where our nation has turned into a bunch of plasma-tv-buying idiots who think that Big Brother (whether in the form of a Union or government - oh, is there a difference? - will take care of you when you get old and gray.) No personal responsibility for your life, for your investments, for anything. Its all someone else's fault - and responsibility.

Remember yesterday I said that the UAW's (and GMs) intent was to offload their health care costs to the US Taxpayer? Guess what - here comes Hitlery with Round #2! Told 'ya so.

Oh, and Northern Rock - a huge British housing lender - came dangerously close to imploding. The Bank of England bailed them out with emergency funding:

"Northern Rock shares plunged as much as 26 percent to a six- year low after the company said today the central bank will provide an unspecified amount of credit. The Newcastle, England- based bank is the U.K.'s third-biggest lender by gross mortgages with loans worth 17.4 billion pounds ($35 billion) as of June 30."

Unspecified eh? Why don't I like the sound of that?

Oh, Hovnovian says that the bottom of the housing market is "very near". This is why you're kicking off a "huge sale" on your properties this weekend, right? Because the bottom is "very near", so you're just throwing money away? Heh Ara - your nose is growing you TOOL!

Retail sales printed kinda bad..... up 0.3%, ex-autos down 0.4%. But this really isn't that bad of a number. Problem - the street wanted either a really BAD number (big rate cuts) or a really strong number (no need for a cut; Chucky is doing great!) They got neither.

The other problem in the numbers is that import prices went down net-on-net, but from China, they went up. This is a potentially huge problem because we've been exporting our inflation to them for years - now, as it always does, its starting to boomerang on us. This is likely the start of a trend, and it will flow through directly to the lower end of the consumer spectrum - everything at WalMart, etc. The consequence of this coming back on the lower to middle end of the consumer spectrum just as we start to see real softening in the consumer is likely to end very badly for us.

So the market did a big fat..... zero.

Yep.

Were FedsDay not two trading days off I'd say that the technicals are bearish, because they are. But - the Fed can do damn near anything to the markets. Hell, they can cheat like they did last time! They can tip The Pigmen to what they're going to do. Would they? Why would I believe they wouldn't?

In any event here we sit with an assload of economic data due early next week and of course the FOMC, along with the primary broker/dealer's earnings reports. Goldman, Lehman, Merrill, Bear. That ought to be fun.

We'll see if Bernanke and friends have the balls to do the right thing. The Paul Volkler thing.

Here's your evening technical.... enjoy!