Market Talk

'Metaphor,' derived from the Greek metapherein, is a figure of speech in which one object is used to suggest a likeness to another object.

It’s still amazing to me that Greece’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, referred to his country’s economy as the Titanic. Was it a Freudian slip? Who would consciously invoke such a horrible metaphor? I mean, for God’s sake, even in the Hollywood version the ship sinks and Leonardo DiCaprio freezes to death.

“We are trying to change the course of the Titanic, it cannot be done in a day,” he said the other day. “We are beginning to show that step by step, we are following words with action. If additional fiscal measures are needed, we will take them.”

Did anybody else do a spit take when they heard that? Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and the rest of this nation’s “finance ministers” are so careful about their words that they often end up delivering a lukewarm stew of boiled platitudes, leaving everybody wondering just what in the hell they’re really thinking. You think Ben Bernanke would ever refer to the U.S. economy as the Titanic?

But, hey, maybe old Georgie was onto something. Newswires publishes economic and political calenders for most nations. I looked at Greece’s this morning, and the first item on it was this:

Wednesday, February 24, 2010: National strike in Greece over public debt dispute.

When the top item on your economic calendar is a national strike, well, maybe you are riding on the Titanic.

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US stock futures look frisky premarket, following advances overnight in Asian markets and currently in Europe as the US dollar loses any buoyancy gained in reaction to last week’s financial tremors in Dubai.

Asset classes reverting to the usual pattern we’ve seen lately with dollar weakness — stocks and commodities up; gold, oil both surge higher. Bank of Japan overnight rolls out a generous lending facility as it attempts to ward off deflation and boost the local economy. Interesting to see some central banks still willing to ease further, despite what many see as a budding global recovery.

October pending home sales, November ISM manufacturing index and Oct construction spending all due at 10:00am. US Nov auto sales also due for release today.

US dollar index down 0.6% at 74.45. S&P futures up 9.00, Dow futures 66. Ten-year lower, yield at 3.23%.

Everything safe and secure, and it's on to lunch.

There’s only two asset classes now, risky assets and non-risky assets, market strategist Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Associates says in his daily commentary, relating the story of a meeting he had with a portfolio manager in London, who worried about a new speculative bubble.

Most of the clients he met with on his swing through Londontown are more bullish than bearish, he says, and the main concern is that there are too many bulls.

This one manager, Yardeni relates, while also seeing more upside, is convinced the flood of liquidity from central banks is reflating commodity and stock prices (a thought that’s crossed our mind once or twice, or daily.)

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