Desperate Measures Thursday- Is an International Ban on Short Selling Imminent?; Repeat of 2008 is Clearly on the Way, But Much Worse; UK's PM Wants to Shutdown Social Media, Like China; Initial Claims, and Laugh; Big Companies Preparing For Slowdown; TEPCO Lost Contact With 143 Nuclear Plant Workers, We Speculate On Their Location; Fukushima Updates; Much More

All the world's a stage, and it's in the final scene. Here's why.

The old cliche about 'when times get tough the tough get going,' still holds true. With "the markets" now making the same wild daily swings as they did in 2008 just before the great collapse of Lehman Brothers et al, we can say with confidence that all confidence in the markets is lost. With that said, what are TPTB to do to keep the appearance up of "stability?" The same desperate measures they tried in 2008 - a ban on short selling - will most likely be tried again. And fail.

Of course, just as in 2008, this ban did nothing but shake the confidence in "the markets" even further as ZeroHedge points out in this article. As if somehow, banning all selling (in essence what they tried to do) would have a positive impact on the markets to keep them propped up. Sure, let's invest in something that we can never sell in this "free market."

Today, Italian stocks continue to get battered and two favorites, Unicredit and Intesa Sanpalo, both were halted multiple times during the day. Attention retail investors - you are not allowed to sell stocks, only buy them. It's a mad, mad world run by mad, mad people. As the possible Presidential candidate for Ireland says, the whole EU is run by "mad people." Seeing what the UK wants to do to the internet, we'll have to agree.

Now, today is Thursday, which means the irrelevant and bogus Initial Claims data is out. We will only report the numbers because it's comical to watch the cheer leaders come out with pompoms in hand and rally "the markets" on this bogus number again, only to have next weeks "revised" number swept under the rug. Today's comical print at 395k on "expectations" of 409k. We guarantee 99.99% that next week the number will be revised upward.

As always, one of Wall Street's finest analysts come out with pompoms in hands to rally the sheeple into buy on this "news." Read it for fun anyways so you can see what these "analysts" are worth. Two words for the amateur who wrote it: Epic. Fail.

Of course, that big companies like Pepsi, Honda, Walt Disney et al are bracing for weakened demand should come as no surprise. Also not surprising will be the big jobs cuts from these companies in their best efforts to preserve profits.

The bull...ish (for CNBS) record breaking droughts that are sweeping the nation will be adding a dozens few percentages points to the price of your next meal as this crop report indicates. In short - significantly less crops for this year equals significantly higher prices at the grocer. Here's the report, but only if you dare know the future. Might want to keep track of it for later.

In other radioactive news, TEPCO says that they "lost contact" with 143 nuclear plant workers. We could make a million jokes about this, but it's plain to see that this is more than clerical errors. The Japanese are not known to be inaccurate unless they hired Americans working for the DMV which leads us to conclude that most likely, these "missing" workers were either 1) abducted by "purple squid looking aliens" (hat tip to Stephen Hawkings for that laugh out loud moment) or 2) most of the missing are in a hospital somewhere dying or dead of radiation poisoning. Given TEPCO's notorious track record for this kind of stuff their handling of past situations and reality, we'll bet on option 2.

From one of the best sources to come from inside Japan, EX-SKF, we learn of many horrific events over the past week - in essence, crimes committed against humanity; many of which we discussed and speculated about and now have been confirmed. One of particular interest however, is concerning what is more recently going on between citizens and the gov't. He says,

"It's all about money. The national and prefectural governments don't want to spend on the residents, decontamination, compensation. So what do they do? They return the residents to their high-radiation homes and schools by telling them Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant is broken in a stable way, so carry on with your lives and stay there."

If you have the time, read his posts. They will enlighten you about what is really going on in Japan.

Finally, from Energy News we learn that Japan's nuclear authority is hiding the test results of at least 1,000 Fukushima children. We already know the reason why and it breaks our hearts. Just like the man we reported on yesterday who never even visited Fukushima and had deadly levels of radiation and the shipping container seized in Egypt that was laced with deadly radiation, the handwriting is on the wall for all to see.

Updates
Update 1: Exactly as we predicted, Japan's economy will be taking big hits sooner rather than later as the exported "stuff" is confiscated at ports around the world due to high radiation levels. Incredible. Russia is rejecting cars from Japan because they are coming into the country will high levels of radiation. Oops.