The gold price drop is more a temporary result of the stratospheric rise of the dollar against other currencies rather than a lack of appeal from the yellow metal. But as I warned last week, I have no idea when this will reverse.

The Fed will end its quantitative easing purchases of government debt as scheduled.

U.S. stocks dipped and bonds slid after the Federal Reserve offered a brighter assessment of the U.S. job market, a shift that investors reckoned could bring forward the timing of interest-rate increases.

Today's blog focuses on Brazil, which faces difficult times under a re-elected Dilma Rousseff.

For the stock market conniptions of the past two weeks, lower oil prices were a sideline in the panicky and bizarre sell-offs.

The US is better able to live with cheap oil than many OPEC countries and outsiders, above all Putin's Russia, which both Saudi and Yankee oilmen want to hurt.