Grimdex
As a born worrier, I work hard not to get carried away by problems that lie in wait around the corner, and reading about the recent rally in gold prices this morning triggered a Chicken-Little alert. It seems that there is something called the "Grimdex" that tracks divergences between the movement in gold prices and those of other "raw industrial materials." When the divergence is small, that's good. When gold shoots ahead - something that seems about to happen - it means that investors are backing out of currency-denominated securities, which in today's worlds means, simply, dollars.
Hurricane season begins tomorrow, and the experts predict a rough season. Am I worried? Well, I'm stocking up on water and batteries and canned goods. (It's no fun to stock up on things in a Manhattan apartment, believe me.) But what does worry me is the same thing that bothers me about the dollar crisis: a sort of national inattentiveness, scarily reflected in this front page story from the Times: "As Hurricane Season Looms, States Aim To Scare." I wonder how helpful it will be to confuse wits already dimmed by television with disaster-film trailer lookalikes.
Unfortunately, we're up to our necks in the problem that worries me now.
