Down the rabbit hole

Hmmm... maybe I should've hung onto those gold coins...

Rex Nutting at MarketWatch had it right for about half the day today after noting the lack of central bank and government action early this morning and wondering if we'd make it until 4 PM, setting the bar ridiculously low per Dylan Ratigan of CNBC who figured, "Not down 500 is the new up."

It was a down day.

Stocks plunged late in the day sending the Dow Jones industrials down 679 points, the lowest level in five years, based largely on fears of a ratings cut for General Motors Corp. Retirement plan investors are said to be furiously exchanging their stock mutual funds for cash - that didn't help.

It's not clear where we go from here.

The G7 meets tomorrow and the world's economic powers will attempt to stop the bleeding, if that's possible at this point. Credit markets are getting worse, not better, and U.S. stocks have lost more than 20 percent over the last seven days of trading. Foreign stocks are down 30 percent over the same period.

There doesn't seem to be any good news today.

The inventory at the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSEArca:GLD) rose by a couple of tonnes this afternoon enabling the world's most popular gold ETF to finally pass Japan which had previously occupied the number 7 spot in the official world gold holdings - 765.74 tonnes for the ETF versus 765.2 tonnes for the Bank of Japan.

That hardly seems like it's worth crowing about, but it makes for nice upward sloping chart, something that is in short supply these days.