My wife and I had a couple of visitors from the northern province of Cagayan, today. They are here attending a nation-wide meeting of Provincial Planning staffs. More power to them. This country is not strong on planning, and I am a strong supporter of planning in any form whatsoever. Symptomatic of the lack of planning, we learned of the visit the night before. By text message from Tuguegarao, the capital of Cagayan. I am sure that this meeting was on the books at least 2 weeks ago. Still, we are happy to receive these people (four of them) as guests at our home in Kapatan.

My wife and I and one of our daughters visited Cagayan in May of this year, to spend some time with a dear friend. During that visit, we met the Provincial Planning Officer, the brother of our friend. During that trip we drove up to Abra, the northern-most point in Luzon. It was an interesting trip, though now the region is less hospitable, being swept by typhoon after typhoon, coming in from the western Pacific.

Being educated men, and interested in US affairs, they questioned me about the financial crisis there. My answer was, "what do you mean 'there'?" The crisis is world-wide in every sense of the word. Being an options trader, I am pretty much up to speed on events, to the extent I can do so on the Internet. I expressed to them my own concern about the gravity of the situation, and told them that I hoped that the legislators in Washington would do the proper thing. Otherwise, as Warren Buffet said the other day, “Heaven Help us All”.



I don’t know if Americans these days fully understand the importance of this crisis. They were almost 100% against the bailout the day before the market crashed 778 points (along with their 401k’s). That got their attention big time. Now, it is 50-50. In my opinion, the American public does not know the half of it. I would not be surprised if the Dow goes down to around 8,000 before this hits bottom, bail-out or no bail-out. God only knows what people will be saying then.

This decline will end only after all the weak hands have let go of their investments, and run for cover. Then things will get better. But, I think, if you are in any way interested in reality, that the bear market will last for several years more. We’ll make money along the way, but it will be very hard work.


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Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C: "As the blood of our young men and women fall on foreign soil in the defense of freedom, our own government appears to be leading our country into the pit of socialism."