You can put out all the sources and statistics you want and all I can do is remind you that the economists were all bullish prior to the Crash of 1929. I've quit listening to the "experts" because they all have a vested interest in how the news they put out affects the markets.

Here's what I see in the world around me. There's an overbuilding in homes and offices in my area of the country. Where investors should be building a modest community or building they're pulling out all stops and putting in huge numbers of houses in areas where the transportation infrastructure and job opportunities haven't caught up yet. The last time I saw this happening we were on the abyss of a huge real estate collapse.

The second indicator I see is this push to get people into homes they truly can't afford using gimmicks such as interest-only mortgages and this proliferation of credit cards pushed on consumers. We as individuals are in hock up to our eyeballs and any diminishing in the number of jobs, import ratios, natural disaster effects, etc. could cause a huge number of forfeitures on those shady house loans. Of course this is all on the cusp of recent anti-bankruptcy legislation that will put many of these folks out on the street and saddle the lending institutions with tons of non-income producing property they can't unload.

The other thing I notice is the flakiness of Wall Street investors. I watch my 401k investments like a hawk and notice that the markets are entirely driven by emotion. One report comes out and the idiots flock in mass along with one another even though the blip on the economy is miniscule. I've actually made a pretty penny watching nothing other than the human emotions at play. One good terrorist attack and these guys are going to blow it as they did in 2001. The collective psyche of these supposed mavins of financial intelligence is somewhere near the group think at a preschool playground during a marble match.

You guys put your faith in the Greenspans of the world. I'm going to trust the gut instinct that has never failed me. The US economy is in for some rough sailing. That's not the end of the world if you're smart about it but I pity the person that believes everything the "suits" and their wishful thinking tell them.

Art