The “sell-off” is now two weeks young as red flags are hoisted daily above a mob of jaw dropped spectators, formerly known as the efficient market. There is no absence of questions on the minds of international market forecasters. Instead, we’re hearing vague rhetoric from analysts and financiers that sounds more like confusion than any sort of prediction. The confident ones are still playing the “buy because markets are down” card, but we are taking an alternative, perhaps disagreeable, path.

Many of you may be asking yourself, “what’s changed since last week with the EU bailout?” One would think there would surely be some sort of news or development concerning the exact structure of this plan, rumored to be a sovereign debt backstop of $1 trillion USD. Is there surely some plan moving forward?

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Looking to the week ahead, many questions regarding the strength of Korea’s economy from the stance of consumers, businesses, and international investors will become much clearer through the aforementioned econ data. However, the KOSPI Korean equity index, the Korean Won, and yields on Korean debt will continue to be heavily influenced by geopolitical factors surrounding the conflict with North Korea and developments in global financial markets, resulting from sovereign default risks in Europe.

While history may paint our stance with the heavy brush of criticism, we’re going on the record to call increased volatillity and a lower close on the S&P 500 by week’s end. We feel it is our duty to yell from the rooftops just how treacherous the current developments in world markets have become. While we won’t stamp corny metaphors to the ailing sovereign debt markets, wasting your time with visions of ships and storms, we do pray that readers appreciate the urgency of this week’s Weekly Spectrum.

In plain English and within the scope of Econ 101, the infamous Nouriel Roubini weighs in on the recently announced $1 Trillion EU debt purchase backstop; discounting its potential for success and identifying roadblocks that may lead to failure.

Specifically, Roubini states that despite the “money on the table”, the following three headwinds oppose a return of normalcy in the European Union’s debt markets.

Crude Oil has reluctantly played follow the leader with U.S. equities for much of the past 12 months. More recently, fundamentals took a back seat to short term speculation as risk takers drove the price of hot button commodities up with stocks. Crude has been in a holding range between $80 and $87/barrel for all of March and April, but in the past two trading sessions NYMEX WTI crude plunged directly from the top to the bottom of that range.

With the Euro diving, Greek Bonds selling off, CDS spreads widening, and now members of the EU fearing contagion risks are growing, the importance of budget cuts in Greece coming to pass has come to center stage of the European debacle.

What will happen if the citizens of Greece defy these cuts and drag out the process until market speculators have driven the continent and it’s mutual currency to it’s breaking point?

Greece, Greece, Greece… Is that Papa guy ever going to get his act together and accept a check from the EU? is it 45 billion or 100 billion Euros now? What’s the deal with these riots in Athens?

Chances are you have answers to these questions, and a few extra cents to contribute to the issue. Frankly, that’s what the comment box is for, and we won’t waste time on the issue beyond these next few words.

U.S. stocks looked unusually strong on Friday as two major factors concerning short term risk in global markets changed dramatically. The stagnant housing market and uncertainty over a viable path to solvency in Greece, which have been weighing heavily on global markets, seem to be less threatening if Friday’s data were judge. Technicals remain extremely overbought in commodities and equities as markets now face Bernanke and Q1 GDP this week.

If you ducked out of the office for a three day weekend and missed the news regarding Goldman Sachs and Greece on Friday, you may be rolling up your sleeves to a few surprises that will cast a dark shadow on the April 19 week’s market action.

Mainly, Goldman Sachs (GS) has been charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), linked to a Credit Default Swap (CDS) mechanism known as “Abacus”.