THE IRRITATED AMERICAN Straight out of Wagner: The Swiss National Bank sets the forex market and brokerages alight . (PIC schnittpunkt) Gotterdammerung! With markets this insanely volatile, and with countries leveling conspiratorial accusations at one another over the idea of this volatility being deliberately engineered for political reasons, the small investor is not yet at the point of stuffing his surplus dollars in a mattress cut, but we certainly are seeing a mad scramble for safe haven investments. With oil producing countries like Venezuela teetering from the oil glut and price drop--the Venezuelan leader is wrapping a PR tour designed to get major producers to curb output to help rescue the South American country's economy--and with the forex explosion via the SNB uncapping of the Swiss Franc leading to a financial disaster at currency broker FXCM, it's understandable for those suffering the worst effects of these tectonic rumblings to see sinister reasons lurking underneath. As I wrote yesterday in my article on Iranian president Rouhani, the Shi'ite national leader hurled threats at Saudi Arabia and the United States, so sure is he that the current glut of oversupply and corresponding downward spiral of crude prices have been engineered by the aforementioned two countries. However, not everybody buys this theory--and this includes Russia, who (the theory goes), was the very target chosen for punishment by the US and the Saudis via " their engineered oil-pricing conspiracy" owing to Putin's support for Ukrainian rebel forces, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and of course Iran. Nothing less than the very Energy Minister of Russia Alexander Novak said that the volatile prices were part of the market and it's natural patterns. In response to Venezuelan leader's stop in Moscow on his global tour to plea for production-curbs, Novak said-- "Many countries agree that any artificial action to change the situation on the market is impossible." Toughening the process of cutting the spigot in Russian production is the fact that somewhere in the ballpark of 40% of the country's output is in private--not government-- hands Yet the ongoing turmoil, toil and trouble--cauldron bubble, beware the ides of March, friends!--in the currency and oil markets, and the corresponding maniacal reactions in the markets en toto leave those worst hit seeing evil phantoms behind the worst of these market machinations. We are living in extremely wild times, my friends. Preston Clive 1/16/2015***