I wanted to leave for some time away with my family and not watch or observe the market or the ticker for a while. As a result. I made it a point to stay away from screens, tickers, news outlets and concentrate on just strengthening the family bond. Good luck with that!!!

I returned only to see that the entire financial system is in the toilet and that everything that I had been warning about is finally coming to light (I’m not happy about it). It looks like Europe is indeed imploding as the Italian stock market and Italy’s banks are being clobbered. The Dow Jones Industrial Average started to slide when I left and it looks like it can’t seem to find the brakes. The U.S. dollar is starting to rally after the debt deal announcement (As I also had suggested it would) and it looks like the European Central Bank is now borrowing a page out of Ben Bernanke’s book as it starts to buy bonds and maintains a dovish tone towards interest rates.

As I write this, almost all major currencies are down vs. the U.S. dollar and the U.S. stock markets are taking a bath, taking the baton from the European session.

Did we really not see this coming though? Let’s be real. The headlines and warning signs were there for everyone to see so long as you bothered to look for them. Notwithstanding the large sums of money being thrown at Europe’s troubled economies, investors still cannot shake the fact that it won’t be enough. Greece was saved by a whisker but it is now grasping at thread to try to keep from falling off a cliff. Despite Italy claiming it has enough cash to meet its obligations, the market isn’t buying it and is routing the nation as we speak. Remember it wouldn’t be the first time that a European nation has flat out lied about the state of its financial affairs. Remember too when dealing with Italy we are dealing with a very crooked and corrupt government. Who knows what to really believe. Let the tape be your guide when observing Italy.

As for the United States, forget the “soft patch” bullshit that you hear and read about. The U.S. never got out out of the financial calamity that gripped it in 2008. The numbers that you’ve seen signalling growth since then were all manipulated to ease fear. The reality is that the nation continued to bleed jobs and the number of people going underwater on their mortgages increased. Home values showed a small bounce after the big drop but the downtrend quickly resumed and shows no signs of letting up.

Let’s be real. Did anyone think for a moment that the greatest recession since the great depression was going to end as quickly as it snuck up on us? Be real for a moment. You don’t fix decades of fiscal irresponsibility with a few short fixes and think that years worth of garbage collection would be resoled in less than a third of the time it took to reach the breaking point.

I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but I am after all a realist and the reality is that no matter where you look today you will see economic warning signs. Europe is on the verge of break up and the single currency is closer to being labelled a failed experiment. The United States has kicked the can further down the road and has shown the world how politics and the lust for power always get in the way of doing the right thing.

Gold tells the real story. The one true currency in a basket of worthless junk paper is showing everyone who cares to observe that all is not well in the world. Gold is telling those that bother to look that there is a lack of faith in currently FIAT currency schemes and that the house of cards upon which all paper money systems are based on is starting to topple in the breeze.

So much happened during my time off that it would take pages and pages of writing to try to make sense of it all. The easier way to analyze it though is to simply skim the headlines, watch the financial markets and conclude that despite all the ‘mumbo-jumbo’, nothing has changed.

Central banks are out of bullets, having used them all up in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse. They have now turned to making their moves in the currency markets as seen in Switzerland the other day with their surprise intervention decision and as we are witnessing now with Japan. Word is also starting to trickle down via the rumour mill that Bernanke might be considering another round of easing because the first two had such a great impact on the U.S. economy! This drop in equities and the slashing of wealth might just be the triggering event that he needed to justify his widely anticipated move.

At the end of the day there is no normalcy left in the financial sphere. When normalcy leaves, you get a market running around like a chicken with its head cut off.