Bad news is good news, at least in stock markets around the world.  If that doesn’t make any sense, you’re far from alone.  But you are on the wrong side of the most important trend around the world right now, which is the fine art of printing (and eventually incinerating) money.

In the last 4 years, central banks in 4 of the 6 largest currency zones (Euro, US, Japan, and UK) have literally printed about $6 trillion, or 5 weeks worth of total production in those places.  Markets are excited by the fact that things look so weak that they are about to print even more.

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Bad news has been roiling financial markets for some time.  It’s hard to stay on top of what has spooked investors recently and how important it might be.  A sense of fear and at time panic drives much of the news.  But last week a few things happened that might just be the worst news we have seen since the meltdown of Lehman in 2008, the event that plunged the financial world into crisis.

Two things have happened that have investment houses running for the exits very rapidly.  The first is that Spain appears to be in need of a bailout, the largest European economy to hit a key threshold yet.  The second is that a weak US jobs report has bid up demand for safe US treasuries to a dangerously high level.

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As the months roll by, we have more data rolling in as we close in on the November election.  Despite some reason for optimism at the start of this year, there is no doubt that the economy is stalling again – making Obama’s job more tenuous.

How bad is it?  We won’t know until we get there, but the latest job figures show that we’re treading water.  It could be worse – we could be drowning.  Whether that’s a good enough case politically won’t be known for a few more months.  But so far we know the economy is not a good bet.

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MF Global, while crashing and burning, lost $1.6 billion – at least that’s what appears to be missing.  JP Morgan, for reasons they don’t quite understand, lost $3 billion – by the most recent estimate.  And now Morgan Stanley has lost at least $18 billion – but this doesn’t count because it was Other People’s Money (OPM).

There has been no bigger joke on Wall Street than the Facebook initial public offering (IPO).  From the beginning up through the sorry slide it’s on today, nothing has worked.  There is even a likely Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into revised earnings information that somehow wasn’t shared with the public – but a few insiders had a peak at.

If you ever needed proof that big investment banks are nothing but leeches sucking the life out of our economy, Facebook’s IPO is it.

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