By Jon Nadler
Gold prices fell back towards $825 overnight and the NY opening was not faring much better this morning. Spot gold was off $16 at $832 as falls in global equity markets derailed any expectations of a quick abatement in the slew of margin calls to be received by various participants. Adding to the commodities gloom, the obvious realization that if the global economy will go through what apparently lies ahead of it, hopes for demand for 'stuff' will have to be sharply revised - and not upward.

For instance, one of the casualties of the fallout from this financial mushroom cloud could be nearly 50 percent of the junior and exploration mining companies. Inside of the next 12 months. Survival of the fittest takes on a while new meaning now. More like survival of anyone who has an ample cash stash in their coffers.

Silver appeared poised to breach the $10 mark this morning, with an opening near $10.02 and was still off 14 cents at $10.13 at last check. Platinum continued to narrow the gap that separates it from gold and fell $54 to $914 per ounce, while palladium dropped $7 to $183 in the continuing noble metals slump. Rhodium gave up another $150 to sink to $2260 per ounce. London's Investec cut its platinum projections to $1,629 for 2008 and $1,350 for next year. Current prices may well be below the marginal cost of production, but demand is nowhere to be found - certainly not in the all-important automotive sector. Meanwhile, oil is telling us a scarytale of a story with a current tick at $73.50 per barrel. Happy motoring.

Blacktober rolled on around the globe overnight, and it made the goriest of any possible upcoming Halloween scares look like a scene from "Bambi." As earnings reports hatched numbers as ugly as any prehistoric creature, central banks around the world probably wondered if they should have waited for their release before coming up with rescue package numbers. Good thing that the word 'unlimited' was inserted into bailout communiques, as the next set of extended hands is already knocking at the door.

A quick survey of the overnight bloodletting shows Citigroup posting a $2.8 billion third quarter loss -its fourth consecutive one - (on top of the $13B it already shredded on bad loans), Merrill Lynch recording a fifth straight quarterly loss of $5 billion (on top of the more than $9B it has already burned through), and BONY Mellon and PNC reporting severely truncated profits. Better rename this third quarter tally time as "losing season." Over in Japan, the Nikkei average shed 11% off of values, with its 1089-point drop. The picture was not any brighter in Korea, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, or Australia. Those markets all fell between 3 and 7 percent. The Dow opens in one hour...

The winner of the overnight financial demolition derby will likely emerge as UBS - or, perhaps, as the Swiss government. In a bold 'let me show you how it's done' move, the leadership of Helvetia surgically removed some $60 billion in stinky assets from the UBS books. No plans to repackage these assets and sell them as aged cheese have yet been announced. Separately, Credit Suisse is seeking to raise billions in capital without governmental help -and is finding some rich uncles in places such as...the government of Qatar (a key CS shareholder).

There is no shortage of predictions to be found on the economic front these days; just tune into any TV channel (okay, maybe not the Cartoon Network). Be advised that keeping some pea-sized grains of sodium chloride nearby would be a very good thing to do. Everyone recalls the firm predictions of $200 oil, $2,200 gold, the $2 euro, $50 silver, and $3,000 platinum. How could they not? we are talking about forecasts made in May and June of this year...

Now, the tables have turned, and the same pundits are falling all over themselves, trying to call the Mariana Trench of the global stock market and economy. Nostradamus has nothing on them when it comes to doom and gloom. But, how valid are such prognostications? Marketwatch's David Callaway examines the crystal ball musings of some of those whose heads should be examined, and finds that the words of Danish physicist Nils Bohr (in our title) ring truer than ever:

" It was still pitch black at 5:45 a.m. on Monday morning and the stock market was 45 minutes from opening as I got out of my car at the local ferry terminal on San Francisco Bay and saw an entire mountain on fire.

A fast-moving blaze on Angel Island, the jewel of the bay, had engulfed more than half of the 700-acre island and created a wall of flame up to the peak of the 780-foot Mount Livermore at its center. From a mile away, I stood with friends from the boat and watched as the flames silently lit the night sky.

"Looks like your portfolio," I said to one buddy, an investor who like everybody else has been scorched by the inferno raging through the global financial system in the last six weeks. The small group of commuters, mostly workers in the financial district, nodded and laughed knowingly, and then headed to the boat for the ride to work and what was expected to be another pummeling in the markets.

Yet that day turned out to be one of the best days ever for the stock market, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 937 points, or the equivalent of its gains for the first 69 years of its existence, between 1896 and 1965.

At times like these, where new records are set daily and five hundred and six hundred point-days in either direction are regarded as more of the same, it's easy to suspend reality and indulge in talk of new eras, ends of Wall Street and capitalism, and collapsing of empires. So it was in the aftermath of 9/11, when experts predicted a severe global depression.

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