I agree, although I cannot help having a good chuckle every time I hear one of my American friends referring to "Socialist" countries, meaning pretty much all of Western Europe. You won't find anyone in Germany, for example, where I currently live, saying that they live in a "socialist" system. The late, unlamented German "Democratic" Republic was a socialist state. We have a free market economy with certain strong social welfare aspects. The opposition Social Democratic Party is not the political home of German socialists - they belong to the Left Party. We didn't nationalise our car manufacturers or major banks in the course of this financial crisis. Believe me, this system is also far from perfect, but the US has shown over many decades that its system isn't the answer either.

I do find the differing definitions of the term "socialism" intriguing, though!

getting close to yesterday's low

Looks as though the VIX wants to close the gap from yesterday.

tick reading 1036.

bounced perfectly off support at 10260.

indicate SPX set to open around 1096..

Fade the gap?

There must be lots of these right now, but I've been watching these two for a while now...

Comments very welcome!

the plug just got pulled, it would seem!!

+0.6% actual, versus 0% forecast

Dollar stronger, futures up.

Gold being dumped.

has spent three past 3 hours and 20 minutes in a 20 point range... and now we're back where we closed yesterday!

waiting for jobs data makes sense. And rp, thanks for all your great charts!

It's almost as though the market is waiting for some momentous announcement or something... but there's no news scheduled for this afternoon or evening, is there?

interesting... already broke through support, whilst SPX and RUT have not.

at 1115-1116 seems to be holding.

wider than Iceland's!!!

no worries, you haven't offended me at all. It's just that I've had the privilege of growing up in a very multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, and then in my adult life had the opportunity to live in several different countries. This experience has made me realize how quickly we will dismiss something as being silly/unnecessary/ridiculous, etc, while another group of people will think the same about our own practices. Anyway, end of discussion, no place for this here, LOL!

Supreme Court Justices in the USA, and their peers all over the world, spend their working lives interpreting the basic laws that underpin their respective societies, and armies of lawyers spend their working lives finding ways around it. Just because it comes from a foreign culture doesn't mean that it's any more ridiculous than many of the things that go on in your own society.

off to the races!

is a major Dubai property developer (govt owned).

A "sukuk" is a bond that conforms to Islamic Sharia law which prohibits the charging of interest.

If Dubai Nakheel were to default on the sukuk, there would be a MASSIVE fallout.