Wow, lots of stories Friday about the “shocking” earnings miss (and lowered forecast) by GE (GE). MarketWatch said, “GE’s warning pokes hole in recent sentiment that credit crunch has passed” and “The rebound had been fueled by renewed sentiment on Wall Street that the worst of the credit crisis — including the threat of spiraling financial bankruptcies — was past.”

A story on CNN said, "'My guess is that earnings forecasts for 2008 are still pretty high relative to the economic reality,' Davidson said."

It’s been done to death already, but a quick scan of yesterday's headlines made you think everyone was in on a huge April Fool prank. UBS (UBS) wrote down $19 billion and Deutsche Bank (DB) wrote down $4 bilion, so investors bought everything in sight, sending the market up almost 400 points to close at 12,654.

Everyone is once again saying that the worst is over, that they’ve finally accounted for all the losses, and that things are going up from here. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they’re wrong - and it’s not the first time.

Read this. Please. It’s the annual report from the Social Security and Medicare trustees, and it has bad news for anyone who doesn’t already have one foot in the grave.

If you pay taxes, you will be paying more - a lot more - sometime soon. The annual report contains all the numbers in black and white, and all that money has to come from somewhere.

I think that the price of “stuff” will go up long term as the dollar continues to fall - and the dollar will continue to fall long term, as our government prints more pretty green pieces of paper. So why have commodities (gold, silver, oil, wheat, etc.) dropped so much over the past few days?

The short answer is that I don’t know. How’s that for sticking my neck out?