U.S. Dollar Index Technical Review
CIGA Eric
The US dollar is tittering on the edges a really ugly technical formation. This time the round number of .8000 is not critical rather it is meaningless. An approach to .8000 only means that .7200 and the old lows are coming into play.
Jim
I would add to watch the force behind the head and shoulders (or 1-2-3) setup. Decaying trend energy during the right shoulder setup would reflect classic distribution action. The upward sloping REV(E) neckline reflects the strength of the rally. Often the REV(E) neckline breaks first during heavy distribution. This would target the 2009 lows, and as suggested above by Jim, bring 72 into play.
U.S. Dollar Index ETF: 
Consumers cut back on credit card use once again
CIGA Eric
Total consumer credit, while no longer decelerating, continues to contract year-over-year.
Total Consumer Credit Outstanding (TCCO) And YOY Change: 
A real trouble spot for lending is real estate loans. Not only is they contracting but also shrinking in their contribution to total loan generation. Real estate loan accounting for nearly 42% of the total loans originated through commercial banks in 2007. That number has dipped below 40% as of July 2010.
Breakdown of Total Bank Credit In Commercial Banks: 
Consumer borrowing fell again in July as households cut back on their credit card use for a 23rd consecutive month, adding more drag on an economy struggling to mount a sustained rebound.
Borrowing dropped at an annual rate of $3.6 billion in July, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday. That marked the 17th drop in credit in the past 18 months.
Source: finance.yahoo.com
Jim,
Greece is back in the news for its debt concealment. What a convoluted mess they’ve made.
Regards,
CIGA Black Swan
Dear Black Swan,
OTC derivatives are easy to get into and sometimes impossible to get out of.
I don’t think Greece is so dumb as to think they could pull the wool over the world’s eyes after being caught with their derivatives down.
They are stuck in some convoluted crap paper. The price of exiting would probably hit the deficit more than their overboard Federal spending.
Regards,
Jim
EU Probes Hidden Greek Deals as 400% Yield Gap Shows Doubt
By Alan Katz and Elisa Martinuzzi – Sep 8, 2010 7:27 AM ET
Four months after the 110 billion- euro ($140 billion) bailout for Greece, the nation still hasn’t disclosed the full details of secret financial transactions it used to conceal debt.
“We have not seen the real documents,” Walter Radermacher, head of the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat, said in a Sept. 2 interview in his Luxembourg office. Eurostat first requested the contracts in February.
Radermacher vows new toughness when officials from his staff head to Greece this month to come up with a “solid estimate” of the total value of debt hidden by the opaque contracts. “This is a new era,” he said.
Greece is the only euro country that lied about using these complex swap contracts after Eurostat told countries to report them in 2008, Radermacher, 58, said. It also likely signed a greater number of individual agreements than any other euro member, based on information it has provided to Eurostat, he said. Greece’s debt was 115.1 percent of its total economic output last year, second among the 16 counties that share the euro, behind Italy’s 115.8 percent.
