What, exactly, is on the other side of the =?

This B.S. coming out of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia just kills me.

What fundamentals are they talking about?  

1 barrel of Oil has ALWAYS equaled 1 barrel of Oil.  Pretty simple really.  We are comparing apples and apples.  OK so far?

$1 from January 1968 DOES NOT equal 1$ in January 2008.  That would be comparing apples and oranges.  

So, I ask the Saudi Oil Minister again - WHAT fundamentals?  The fundamentals of the US$?  If you are comparing Oil and $'s, and the supply of oil is stagnant, but the supply of $'s doubles... doesn't the price of Oil in $'s double (all else being equal)?  Ah... but here's where it gets tricky... Oil has never cost more in exchange for Gold.  What about Oil to Corn? Or Wheat? The point is, the analysis of the "fundamentals" on which oil trades is in serious flux at the moment, and I suspect that these different commodities and currencies are going to stretch a great deal, and in more than one direction, before an equilibrium is reached.  And the Saudi Oil Minister? He has much less of an idea as to what that is than your average workaday trader doing an honest bit of homework.

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Housing has doomed banking.

Housing ain't coming back until the backlog of unsold homes clears.  I hear numbers thrown around by the NAR... 4.4 years of inventory... 4.8 years of inventory... B.S.!  They don't have a clue what is hanging out there.  

In the formerly hot markets... Las Vegas, California, Florida, D.C., Atlanta, etc... the only deals getting done are out of foreclosure - and for prices that, if extrapolated for ALL of the homes now in arrears or held by folks with no equity, means that ALL of the equity in the banking industry is no more.  That is what you are seeing in the price action of the Banks & Brokers, which, as measured by the XLF, hit a closing and intraday low today.

The market has spoken.

Mentatt (at) yahoo (d0t) com