Powerful article over at www.smallgovtimes.com by Gary North. A snippet: Why Bernanke is in panic mode August 1, 2009 by Gary North Usually, when Ben Bernanke is interviewed, he has the demeanor of a college professor in the presence of freshman students. Of course, as a full professor, he did not have to teach freshmen. That is for untenured assistant professors to do. Stammering and stuttering are therefore a real departure for him. There is a reason for this.

The markets may be stuttering…with the euro suffering in overnight trading and stock indices down over a percent at today’s open…but a continued rally still seems the foregone conclusion du jour. We’re not necessarily going to question it.

Despite a few brief months of rational behavior last year, the markets are given to obeying only their own reality. Something that Cornelius Luca – Editor of The Money Trader – picked up on last week…

“The U.S. jobless data was worse than expected,” he said in reaction to last week’s unemployment news…

“The unemployment rate climbed to 8.9% in April, the highest since late 1983. That was as forecast. More importantly, if we include laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work, then the unemployment rate would have been 15.8% in April! And the nonfarm payrolls were bad in April and MUCH worse

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There’s nobody like an investment banker to deliver yesterday’s news tomorrow, and charge you dearly for it. Goldman Sachs have turned bullish on the dollar, while Merrill Lynch are calling crude oil down to $80. If bandwagon jumping was an Olympic sport, these guys would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. After pumping up the commodity and Euro bubbles all year, a whiff of a bear market and they shamelessly perform a high speed U-turn. Even more amusing is the sudden discovery by the CFTC, which bent over backwards to convince Congress that oil prices were set by fundamentals, that they underestimated the share of trading accounted for by financial speculators. You don’t say. If a canny operator like Boone Pickens has lost $2bn in a month on oil futures, the odds of another Amaranth Advisors style blowup are worryingly high over coming weeks …