In a bid for foreign investment, North Korea has created a dozen special zones, so reports a South Korean newspaper. The country needs hard currency, thanks to lack of trading relationships and an economy that redefines "troubled." Raw material and power shortages have constrained heavy industry in North Korea, which has traditionally been the mainstay of its economy.

The new zones will offer new opportunities for economic growth, though the North's past experiments with special economic zones haven't been terribly successful.

Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- has been secure over the past year and a half as the recession has touched every leader in every organization in every country. Does 'every' sound a bit extreme? Well, the latest news out of North Korea warrants it. The top dog over at North Korea's secret treasury, Kim Dong Un, has been bounced, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

North Korea's secret treasury, also known as Room 39, is one of the most secretive organizations in the most secretive country in the world. Its purpose is to bring foreign currency into a country whose own paper is of no value to anyone but coin collectors. Rumors abound as to how Room 39 actually accomplishes this, including forgery, drug trade and weapons trafficking among the means used.

Even though the regime has loosened some of the restrictions on currency exchange, inflation is still skyrocketing in North Korea. The government recently announced that it was moving to a new currency, and that the swap would involve a limit on how much could be traded. As a result, personal wealth was being consciously constrained, which led to the open questioning of the regime, defiance and rioting in some cases, and even a rare instance of flexibility among Kim Jong Il's subordinate decision makers.

Reports from inside the isolated communist state suggest that food shortages and price inflation have resulted from the new monetary policy, exacerbating a difficult situation with which the country already had to cope.

The timing couldn't have been worse. Just as a U.S. envoy arrived in North Korea to meet with the reclusive regime's officials, protests and violence are reported to have erupted. The country is reacting to a new currency issue that is being used to seize most of the citizens' money and savings.

On November 30, 2009, the regime announced that it would issue new currency and cap the amount that could be exchanged at the equivalent of $40. This effectively rendered the money held privately worthless.

Here's something I try to convey to students I teach at the undergraduate level: it can take years, even decades to confirm economic trends -- 'instant-analysis' is frequently wrong and often serves little purpose -- but there are trends one can discern fairly quickly.

One economic trend that's clear and one investors need to recognize: Like orthodox communism, market absolutism is dead as an economic philosophy.

Update: Many readers and other people who have seen this quote making the rounds on Wall Street believe it is a hoax.

Hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson sends out wonderful e-mails about every day. I just got a new one today, and he included this incredible quote from Karl Marx:

"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism. (Das Kapital, 1867)

What does it all mean? I'm not really sure. But Karl Marx's theory that capitalism would inevitably lead to communism has mostly been dismissed -- proven wrong by the survival of capitalism and the fall of communism.

And while it is true that there was a fat lady singing at Obama's inauguration (she was great by the way -- just sayin'), Karl Marx may still have the last word yet.

Of course some Republicans will point to Obama as a step toward socialism. So does that mean Marx was right?