I'll begin with a quote from Gartman's letter today.

"Moving on to the Fed, its non-decision decision on
rates, and its decision late last night to offer to buy
80% of AIG in exchange for a market-set loan of
$85 billion, we begin by saying that Fed has

"played" the market like a finely tuned Stradivarius"

Gartman, a true believer in the Republican regime that has brought about the socialization of the mortgage industry and now the socialization of the life insurance industry must then be a socialist at heart. Ironically, he has great fear and loathing for a nationalized health care plan but is quite ok with nationalizing death insurance.

He's still bearish on Gold, citing that gold sales by central banks have not been been close to targets set by the Washington Agreement. He claims if they did start selling to meet their quotas it would amount to a rout in the gold markets. He's probably right on that point but misses the fact that there is probably a good reason that central banks are not selling gold. They are hording it... now why the heck would they do that if they didn't have any concerns about the US dollar?

Could it be that the trillions of dollars the Fed is now on the hook for may present a slight liability for the US? That they fear the US may in fact be heading for collapse?

He goes on to say that gold will be hard pressed to make gains in light of other commodities selling off. While he admits that a commodity selloff is indicative of a weakening economics around the world, he continues to defend the very regime that got us here and the notion that the USD will rise in the wake of this underlying economic downdraft.

My feeling is that Gartman has painted himself into a corner by his political views. He so wants to defend the Republican regime that he has let it cloud his otherwise and previous good judgement. If the world economies are to recover, then commodities will lead the way as demand increases and that will raise gold. If the world economies are headed for collapse, it will continue to be led by the US financial industry which will sink the dollar and lead to rising gold.