A few weeks ago it all seemed obvious to me that the day of reckoning was coming soon and I moved a great deal of my 401k into the stable accounts and bond market. The areas I did leave funds in that were primarily stocks all took big hits over the past week but I greatly minimized that and on balance, by the end of the month I should end up about even.

Now I have no insider information but it just always seems absolutely clear to me when the goons on Wall Street are out of their frigging minds and buying up to record levels like there's no economic problems going on around us. All you have to do is sit back and imagine them like the bird in the movie "Bambi" that's sitting there in absolute fear as the hunters approach. Bambi's telling her not to fly but the panic just overwhelms her and she flutters off to her death.

These morons in suits act the same way in this giant cycle of greed and panic and they radio their intentions completely. It's tough to pin down the exact date they are going to fold but it seems pretty easy to nail it within a day or so. It also seems that they just can't rest until they hit these milestone numbers. In the last run-up, the optimists had to be part of the push to 14,000 even though there were huge economic setbacks going on around them. I knew as soon as they hit that that the selling trend would begin.

I'm just curious if anyone else is seeing these obvious human trends in the market and doing what I'm doing?

Now my prediction for the next year. There will be one final buying spurt to get the Dow back up in the 14,000 range and then the bottom's going to fall out hard. We've yet to see the floor of the housing market and it will devastate the mortgage and banking industry. There are still leftover construction projects from the real estate boom that are finishing out soon and the owners are facing a tough time filling all that square footage with tenants. That will pretty much put an end for now for future construction. I don't know how it is in the rest of the country but many of the workers around me are connected in some way to the construction industry. When building stops, all those people go on the unemployment list with their own high rate adjustable mortgages and no health care. We're in a bit of an oil glut in our area right now but indications are that long term supplies are shaky with OPEC cutting back and crude prices at record levels. China's a bit ruffled by talk of trade sanctions and is publicly talking about calling in the huge debt it holds in our country.

There's no end in sight yet for Iraq and it's bled nearly a trillion dollars out of our hands since it started while Cheney's blustering about invading Iran again. The average citizen is mortgaged to the hilt and we are setting low records for savings. Recent laws are now in place that make it extremely difficult for folks to use bankruptcy to protect them if tragedy hits and credit card companies are able to boost interest rates to impossible levels if a payment gets stuck in the mail. Our infrastructure is crumbling around us and we seem to have no money to pay to fix it.

This is sounding not just like recession to me but a full fledged dustbowl depression looming in our near future. Now I seem to be very adept (or very lucky) at reading the human nature driving the stock market and my Spidey-sense is tingling about joining Woody Guthrie boarding freight trains. Someone please tell me what part I'm missing here.

Art