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* Will the ADP report be a good indicator? * China to slow treasury purchases? * Gold as a store of wealth... * Dealing with the devil... ** A Jobs Jamboree Friday... Good day... And a Happy Friday to one and all! A Fantastico Friday, as it is forecast to get to 50 degrees today here in St. Louis. Never mind that tomorrow's high will be 29! It doesn't take away from today! What a trading day in the currencies yesterday... Whew! It's a Jobs Jamboree Friday, so let's not beat around the bush... It's time to Jamboree! Today is the day the Gov't prints the December Jobs Jamboree, and if Wednesday's ADP report did what they said it was going to, and that is change their methodology to mirror the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) then this morning's Jobs Jamboree will be a nightmare. Of course not the kind of nightmare that the over 2.5 million people that lost jobs in 2008 had! I was once in those numbers, as our old Bank, Mark Twain Bank, was bought by a bigger bank, Mercantile Bank, and Mercantile decided after a few months to perform ethnic cleansing of Mark Twain employees... I called it "my retirement" but with a 3 year old at home and on my lap most of the day, "retirement" couldn't last too long! My point is that you don't know the emptiness and failure you feel when they show you the door... So my thoughts are always with those that lose their jobs......

* Fed cuts rates 50 BPS! * Currencies rally Big! * 3rd QTR GDP to go negative? * I.O.U.S.A. ** Heading Towards Zero... Good day... And a Tub Thumpin' Thursday to you! It certainly was a Tub Thumpin' Wednesday for the currencies, foreign stocks, commodities, and the Philadelphia Phillies! This by no means that the deep dense fog that has hung over the markets for 3 months has lifted for good... It did, however, lift for one day, and what a day it was! Oh, and the Fed did indeedly do cut their Fed Funds rate to 1%, which works out great since Fed Funds had been trading at 1% anyway! I had a reported from Dow Jones call me a few minutes after the rate cut and ask me my opinion on what the dollar was doing, which at the time was rallying back a bit... I said it looked like a classic case of buy the rumor sell the fact, that enough speculators were pushing the dollar lower ahead of the rate cut in hopes that a larger cut would be made. That, however, was not the case, and the dollar rallied... But only for about 20 minutes, and then it took a rid on the slippery slope, with the euro pushing to the 1.29 handle as I left for the day....

* Central Bank intervention is the reason... * Busy data week... * Australia's central bank to mirror the BOE?... * China to slow appreciation ... ** Central bank intervention is the reason... Good day... I know most of you opened the Pfennig up this morning hoping to get a blast of Chuck's witty writing style. Well the airlines arranged for Chuck to stay in San Francisco a little longer, so you'll have to wait another day. The currency markets continued to get hammered by the US$ on Friday with the dollar index climbing all the way back above 76, a level we haven't seen since mid February. The dollar did sell off a bit in early European trading, but it has started to climb again as I write. Several readers sent me an excellent opinion piece by James Turk which appeared on GoldMoney's website. Mr. Turk points to central bank intervention as a major reason for the recent dollar strength. The article agrees with what I was saying last week; that the dollar has no fundamental reason to be rallying. The reports and news out of the US have not been favorable to the greenback, and the twin deficits in the US continue to soar out of control. I mentioned that the recent moves of the dollar smacked of intervention, as the dollar only wanted to move in one direction, ignoring any data which would typically send it back down. Turk points to some data which backs up this intervention theory....

* Softer CPI? * Foreclosures on the rise... * Just wishing on a star... * Jim Rogers on a Wednesday!...