Look at major companies that trade around the world and are not dependent upon Western sources of revenue

If you have money in the US banking system, Commodity Trend Alert editor Eric Roseman recommends you put it instead in Treasury bills or exchange traded funds (ETFs) that invest in short-term Treasury securities like SHV or SHY.

“Two-hundred dollar oil would break the back of the global economy,” Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank AG (DB), told Bloomberg News in an interview yesterday (Wednesday) in Tokyo. “Next step after $200 would be global recession and bad news for everybody.”

Late payments on home-equity loans are at a record high, and delinquency rates on loans for cars, small businesses and construction are at levels not seen in a decade or more — all bad news for lenders, regardless of their subprime exposure.

From Tokyo to London to New York, financial companies announced plans to shed more than 83,000 jobs since last July as revenue and compensation pools evaporated, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg.