With with a full-blown crash taking place in the Greek stock market, today a legend in the business sent King World News a powerful piece discussing how absolutely insane the stock market crash is in Greece. He also discussed an imminent technical collapse in commodities and a shocking story.
From Art Cashin's notes: "On this day in 1945, an American Naval Ship made an amazing discovery in the Pacific waters between Guam and Leyte. What they discovered floating in the water, were the captain and crew of another American warship. These men were the few survivors of the U.S. heavy cruiser, Indianapolis.
As they pulled the men aboard, they learned the sailors had been in the water since the Indianapolis had been sunk by a Japanese Sub a full 5 days earlier. Initially, there were hundreds of survivors and in true military tradition they banded into groups of twenty or so. And while they floated for days (the ship went down so fast there were no lifeboats), they told each other the Navy would send someone for them. But the Navy didn't even know they were there.
In one of the great screw-ups (were you in the service, Dad?), the Port Commander of the place they left had assumed they were in the next port since he hadn't heard otherwise. And the Port Commander of the port where they were due, thought they had arrived, got new orders and left. How else would you explain the empty berth.
So, somehow, a U.S. ship of the line with over 1200 men aboard simply fell off the tracking table. A later investigation would claim that the message that the Indianapolis was headed for Leyte was so garbled that it was unintelligible. No request for resend was recorded. Rather strange since the Indianapolis had been the vessel that brought the Hiroshima A-Bomb to its launch point. But, mission accomplished, the Navy dispatched the Cruiser into sub-infested waters with nary an escort.
But if the Navy didn't come, the sharks did. If you saw the movie, Jaws, you may recall a discussion of sharks and their feeding frenzy among the waiting survivors of the Indianapolis. And if you survived the sharks, there was the burning sun.
With no shade at all, many men went blind and the heat dried you out unless your thirst made you drink the seawater…which naturally made you hallucinate for hours before it poisoned you. And then there were the life jackets. The Navy brass had ordered special Kapok life jackets which worked great unless you were in the water for over 48 hours after which they became waterlogged and dragged you under. In the end, only 320 men of a crew of 1200 survived.
The public was outraged at the tale of horror and that the men suffered so long. Someone had to pay. Since the screw-up was clearly among the top brass, they resorted to the old management ploy…pull the captain out of the drink, dry him off and blame him for getting sunk in the first place. So….Capt. Charles McVay became the first and only U.S. Navy Captain in World War II to be court-martialed for having his ship sunk out from under him.
To mark the day, try not to dwell on the inability of management (military or otherwise) to get their act together. Rather recall that regular Americans somehow find ways to beat all odds and surprise everyone. Let’s hope that continues.
There were a few sharks in the water Friday but the market's real problem was that it ran aground of data dependency and weak oil.
Overnight And Overseas – Greek markets reopened with stocks plunging 22% at the start and some banks losing 30% or more. Shanghai was volatile again but managed to close down "only" 1.1%, as it bounced off its 200 DMA. Tokyo was off a bit while India rose a bit.
In Europe, equity markets are better on generally better earnings reports but most are up only about 80 points or so. The dollar firmed against the Euro putting some pressure on commodities. Oil is trying to stay above $46 and gold is off three bucks. Other metals like copper, lead, nickel and platinum are all lower. U.S. equities are mixed to little changed in nervous pre-opening trading.
Consensus – A big week of data for the "data driven" Fed. Key obviously is Friday's payroll data. We'll be watching what may be an imminent technical collapse in commodity prices. (Didn't the Fed tell us that commodity weakness was transitory? And, oh yeah, wasn't the real estate problem contained?) Keep an eagle eye on oil. Stick with the drill – stay wary, alert and very, very nimble." ***KWN has now released the extraordinary audio interview with Bill Fleckenstein and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW. Fleckenstein discusses the gold and silver markets at length, why the stock market will collapse, what surprises to expect and much more.
***KWN has also now released the remarkable audio interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW. Dr. Roberts discusses a world on the edge of chaos, the turmoil in the gold and silver markets, what surprises to expect and much more.
***ALSO RELEASED: Bill Fleckenstein – I Don't See Any Way Possible This Can End Without A Collapse CLICK HERE.
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If you are interested in purchasing physical gold and silver for delivery you can call Steve Quayle or his staff at (406)586-4842, or you can email them at tyler@safetrek.com or info@sqmetals.com
The audio interviews with Bill Fleckenstein, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Robert Arnott, Eric Sprott, John Mauldin, Stephen Leeb, Egon von Greyerz, Nomi Prins, Gerald Celente, Andrew Maguire, Michael Pento, Rick Rule, David Stockman, Chris Powell, Dr. Philippa Malmgren, Marc Faber, Felix Zulauf and Rick Santelli are available now and you can listen to them by CLICKING HERE.
