First, stock markets around the world tumbled: Japan down 4%, France & German down 7%, China & Great Britain, down 5% -- 42 of 43 stock markets dropped, with the exception of Sri Lanka, where apparently communications with the outside world had been cut (or they just ignored the news). Estimates show the US Dow Jones Industrial Average opening 400 - 500 points lower in the morning. Reason given for the drops is nervousness that US subprime crisis will spread worldwide.

Here's news, fellows, it already has.

No matter what happens tomorrow, or where the eventual bottom & springboard for a rally comes, use the rally off those lows to dump the rest of your stocks.

But swap them into silver & gold? What? With gold dropping 18.50 & silver 56.8 cents today? Be calm: panic affects every market, but silver & gold will grab on.

Metals were hurt today by the Euro's fall against the US Dollar, mirrored in the Dollar Index's gain of 65 basis points -- huge -- nd close over 77 at 77.029.

No doubt the Nice Government Men on the Plunge Protection Team & all those other Protectors of Profits as Wall Street Knows Them will be up all night, cooking up some scheme to jack up the stock market. Forget it.

They will gesticulate helplessly, like King Canute ordering back the tide, but unlike the wise Canute will point to each advancing wave as proof of "their" power -- before the wave retreats again.

I don't know what y'all do, but when it looks like the world is about to blow apart and I'm sitting in front of the explosion, I run back to Ps. 118:6 or 2 Timothy 1:7. What's happening here lies way past my cure or cleverness.