The first half of the year is over, and now all those brokerage accounts and retirement accounts will be sending out statements to hapless account holders, and it is bad news in spades. This is why (I assume) the Plunge Protection Team (composed of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and bank insiders) tried to drive the stock markets up on Monday, June 30 - to make those account statements look not quite as bad, and, hopefully, prevent people from dumping all of their stock and bond holdings in a desperate attempt to save something before the whole idiotic, fiat-currency, unlimited-fractional-banking thing just collapses.

Perhaps this drop in the market averages (as demand overwhelms supply) is what prompted John Williams at shadowstats.com to write, "Overhanging the markets for a number of years has been the question as to when the major holders of excess U.S. dollars in the global financial system might look to dump those holdings. An opportunity for that dumping …