Jan.21/08 - Black Monday Meltdown - Here are the Stats.

A worldwide sell-off today sent stocks into a nose dive with a global meltdown in markets from Hong Kong to Europe. Today was the single largest one-day loss since 9/11. Here are the numbers.

• In Japan the Nikkei Index was down 535.35 points ending at 13,325.94
• The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong plunged 1,838.01 points (5.49%) to 23,818.86
• The Chinese Shanghai Composite Index fell 5.1%
• The Bombay Exchange in India lost 7.41%
• Germany's DAX 30 tumbled 7.2%
• France's CAC-40 was down by 6.8%
• Britain's FTSE-100 lost 323.5 points closing at 5,578.2 representing a loss of nearly 60 million pounds in share values on the exchange.

In today's worldwide market plunge, equity investors lost hundreds of billions of dollars.

It's obvious that today's meltdown clearly demonstrates that investors are deeply concerned about the U.S. economy and its housing and credit crisis. Investors have rejected President Bush's economic stimulus plan for $145 billion worth of tax relef to encourage consumer spending, as they have also rejected Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's totally lame argument that equity strength in global markets would be sufficient to withstand a downturn in U.S. equities experienced by the bursting real estate bubble.

How naively arrogant on the part of Secretary Paulson.

It's also painfully apparent that the investors have given a thumbs-down to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's assurances that the U.S. central bank will repond with a big interest rate cut.

Fasten your seat belts! We're about to go for a ride on a rollercoaster that we shouldn't even have to be on in the first place.

Another Boner for the Pentagon?

So here's the scenario. The U.S. Navy is running exercises between southern Japan and Taiwan.

Involved is the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk ... a 1,000 foot supercarrier with 4,500 personel on board. She is accompanied by at least a dozen American warships which are supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft and submarines.

Part of the costly defensive screen usually also includes at least two U.S. submarines.

Everything is going along "just swimmingly" until an undetected Chinese submarine suddenly "pops-up" right smack dab in the middle of the exrcise ... haroh yankee boy ...within missle and torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk. Oh my!

According to senior NATO officials the U.S. had no idea that China's rapidly growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication.

Let me understand this .... with year-over-year multi-billion dollar budgets, satellites, interception of voice and data transmissions, spies, double-agents, triple-agents and God knows what other espionage gadgets and things that go bump in the night the U.S. and its allies use each and every single day to track the "goings-on" of other countries .... after all that .... the Pentagon still had no idea of China's level of naval sophistication? Wow!

Obviously someone has to walk the plank on this one. The only question is ... will it be Larry, Curly or Moe?