Wednesday Roundup

Here’s a scary chart from the Council on Foreign Relations, showing that foreigners are buying far fewer long-term US bonds than they used to.

You can draw your own conclusions.

Meanwhile, just how bad off is Chrysler? So bad off that, when Fiat basically gets a third of the company for no money, we still have to loan them $3 billion to make it happen.

For the record, I would take a third of Chrysler off someone’s hands if they would loan me $3 billion to do it. And here’s a suggestion: Why don’t we put Fiat in charge of our entire auto industry? They obviously know how to swing an advantageous deal.

Here’s a link to an amazing satellite image of yesterday’s crowd on the Mall in Washington D.C. at the Presidential inauguration. The dark clumps on the mall are people clustered around the Jumbotron TV screens.

One of our analysts, Amber Dakar, attended the inauguration. She, her mom and friends had to get up at 2 am to get to the Mall at 4 am. They then stayed through the bitter cold till the end. She told me this morning: “Now, we’re all sick, but it was GREAT!”

Here’s another meaningless Election/Politics/Market statistic/chart. I only link to it because it will likely be popular and one of your friends may buttonhole you and start yapping about it. The correct response: “It’s meaningless.”

It’s not that I hate Thomas Friedman — it’s hard to hate a person you haven’t even met in the flesh — it’s that I hate the fact that my otherwise-brilliant friends and family are snookered by such a pompous bag of wind. Matt Taibbi sums up my feelings on Friedman’s latest book.

I wrote a MoneyandMarkets.com piece about oil. In the short-term, I think it’s going lower. The longer-term forces are still there, but when will the next push higher begin? That’s the trillion-dollar question.

Check out my new gold and energy blog at MoneyAndMarkets.com