Les Bourses replongent ce matin.

That's French for "the markets are plunging again this morning." To find practical current terms in French to describe the stock market actions, I turned to Le Monde at http://www.lemonde.fr/ because just simply translating American idioms might not have made sense. But I read this morning that French does use terms like "red" aka "rouge" and "green" aka "vert" to characterize gains and losses.

Did I mention that I am learning French ? I've been doing this from about six weeks now and have made fine progress.

Why ?

Simple, I need more culture and often good writers include some French phrases without translation. And the French language has innumerable works of great literature, unlike Spanish which has had little for four hundred years since Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. And one even comes across French in fine TV shows like the old "The Avengers" series with Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel. Last evening while watching some shows from that series [I bought the entire series on DVD], I understood the French that John Steed spoke.

And a bonus, research shows that learning a language helps one improve and retain memory skills as one ages. And I am aging. After 40 years of cramming science and finance into half of my brain, the verbal, literature and language side is "relatively" empty. After a session of French, I can actually feel that my head is "pumped" like a muscle after lifting weights. So this does work to "exercise" one's mind.

My guess is that since language skills were certainly a critical ability in the development and evolution of human beings from apes, to exercise and develop one's mind fully really requires learning languages.

Learning more words and usages in one's native language is one way to that. But I think learning a foreign language is another, complementary way.

By the way, English borrowed so many words from French that learning French vocabulary gets a huge boost. And so far, I think much of the grammar is a bit similar, too. I had learned some Latin and Russian in the past. To me, French is far easier and also far more rewarding.

PS: I see that web site for Le Figaro has helpful writing about stocks in French, too. See http://www.lefigaro.fr/

Markets

What will the ECB to today ? And the Bank of England ? Both central banks have base rates far too high for conditions. They need to cut rates in large steps.

PS: Bank of England cuts 150 bps from 3% to 1.5% ! Good move. Will "The Ostriche" awaken ?

PPS: I see the Sgeve Leisman on Babblevision reads this blog. He just said that there never was any inflation ... just a commodity bubble.

Actions

None. Two shippers (DRYS and EXM) posted fine earnings. Both benefit from having a majority of ships under long term contracts at good rates.

Word of the Day

"Argosy" - noun [$10] poetic
Argosy means a large merchant ship, originally especially one from Dubrovnik (aka Ragusa) or Venice.
Sentence: Every voyage of an argosy in world trade among nations requires financing the goods being transported for the duration of the voyage until delivery. This is a critical corner of credit that is having problems in recent weeks according to recent articles in FT and WSJ. Governments looking to help cure the credit crisis need to focus some resources and / or verbal suasion here.