(Nobody has called him Two Card Monti yet.)

In this case, Monti is playing the role of power broker, since he is in a caretaker role in a caretaker government as prime minister of Italy since he's not facing an election. Therefore Monti can do what he wants and act as the broker between the haves and the have-nots in Europe.

The so-called "austerity" programs in Greece and Spain are simply a scam because they're meaningless since they're never going to happen the way they are proposed other than "on paper." But they have to be at least "on paper."

So even though the citizens of the countries are demonstrating and rioting in the streets, it is simply the economic decline of these nation-states that is causing the current financial misery. This has been long building and is now coming out into the open.

In a world of euphemisms, these so-called "austerity" programs are "required" for the ECB to act. Of course this isn't credible, yet the markets continue to rally. This shows the dumbing-down factor that has occurred in markets.

Thus markets are rallying on the perceived “risk trade” of another band-aid in the works – that the ECB, the Federal Reserve, the BoJ (Bank of Japan) and PBOC (People’s Bank of China) are going to be able to successfully engineer another Grand Kicking the Can Down the Road Scheme.

The response in the markets is that they've gotten much more of a rally out of it this time than they had in the past -- considering that they haven’t even undertaken any measures yet.

So why are the markets rallying? Are the markets really that dumbed down?

Yes. Now you have the lowest level of knowledge in the markets than have ever existed in history. It could be said that 80% of the market today are essentially small dumbed-down trader-wannabes who have only been trading during the last ten years.

For the rest of this column by Al Martin, click on to Al Martin Raw.

* Author AL MARTIN is an Independent Political-Economic Analyst and Market Analysis Expert with 25 years of experience as a trader on NYMEX, CME, CBOT and CFTC. He is also currently trading the commodity futures market every day and night and has a teleconferencing service to facilitate transactions in the markets. This is a service for independent market experienced traders.

For more details on commodity futures market trading recommendations and more FREE sample columns, take a look at Al Martin's website "Insider Intelligence" Insider Intelligence for weekly exclusive commodity trading recommendations that could make you money in these dramatic perilous times.