Today, often the most timely information comes from blogs. Of course, the trouble with early data points is that they may just be outliers rather than an indication of trend changes. Still, there were a couple of interesting data points. First, from Russ Winter, reports from ShopperTrak show a dramatic falloff in retail sales:

And then from Jim Klinge, a real estate agent in San Diego, we see a big dropoff in closings. The most recent week to week comparison is down 52% compared to last year. Note how consistent the previous years have been, lending some support to the view that the subprime mess is starting to bite into the ability to sell houses.

Weather? Random data or poor reporting? Too early to tell, but does look like squall on the horizon to me.

There was a number of megayachts around in the BVI. At various times in Gorda Sound, we saw Larry Ellison’s “Rising Sun”, Barry Diller’s “Eos”, and “Le Grand Bleu”, owned by one of the Russian oligarchs (and notable for carrying a 68′ powerboat and a 70′ sailboat in davits).

Obviously these immense and staggeringly expensive toys show the current levels of excess and waste, which far eclipse the 1920s episode.

Cnet News: “Stock market commentator and CNBC television host Jim Cramer has raised eyebrows after describing illegal activities used by hedge fund managers to manipulate stock prices. In a December video interview on TheStreet.com Web site, a financial news company he co-founded, Cramer described how, at his previous job running a hedge fund, he could push stocks higher or lower based on whether he was short-selling or betting a stock would go up.”

Cramer was just a little fish. This stuff goes on all the time, on a much bigger scale than Cramer was capable of. There are numerous rants on this blog about the abuse of program trading, window-dressing and so forth. The SEC is in the pocket of Wall Street and turns a blind eye.

Nose to the grindstone, catching up on accounting and getting ready to do taxes.

I guess Wile looked down, but then closed his eyes. So we’re still waiting. But the mess is getting worse. Even the Fed knows that the economy is tanking and so didn’t say anything about tightening.

Every so often, Steve Roach of Morgan Stanley writes a piece that can only be described as complete and elegant. He has done it again with “The Great Unravelling“.

I was going to put some key quotes in this post, but it is so well written that it is all important, there’s nothing to highlight except the whole darn thing.