12/9/09 Midday Report: Nothing to see here

No really, there's not much to see today except for this and maybe this.  The dollar started to decline again thus boosting commodities and reversing some of the downturn the stock market has taken over the last week.  No new data, but traders have to make money somehow so banging the soft dollar is a reasonable enough way to play the market on a slow day (while banging Jessica Biel is a reasonable enough way to play any day).

In other news, Japan announced that their economy grew slower than first thought due to reduced capital spend.  As a result, they are thinking of letting Godzilla out of his cage in order to rampage Tokyo again and thus have to increase capital spend to fix the destruction.  It's not the greatest strategy, but then again neither was allowing banks to keep issuing debt while not forcing them to write-down and declare their bad debts and half-assing government intervention, so it's not like Japan has had a ton of great ideas (the Nintendo Wii and MarioKart excluded).

Also, British officials put down their bangers and mash, put out their fags, and put in their dentures just long enough to declare a one time 50% tax on all bank bonuses.  Take that you greedy bankers who made loans to gullible people who faked their employment records to buy things they couldn't afford and then sold them at higher prices to other people who couldn't afford them all to make a quick Euro.  But at least the government is going to use that money to cut their budget deficit and not to get drunk on a week long bender in Courchevel, France like other governments are prone to do.