cuzo.. speeding up the US handover for president is not exactly...

cuzo.. speeding up the US handover for president is not exactly going to make any difference to the short term economy.. they are just puppets (presidents) anyway and always will be.. Wall St is where the roots of the Global financial system lye whether we like it or not. This will not change in the short term imo, or probably not even in our lifetime.

It may seem to the rest of the world that the US is in over their heads this time and that there financial instruments have finally crossed the line... but imo it is not the financial instruments that need to be blamed but the inexperienced fools and fraudsters that are dealing with them. Regulation is the key to this mess and the sooner all the governments of the world realise this the sooner the global financial system will recover. The Us and indeed the world have seen tough times before (albeit this time prob takes the cake) but you can bet your bottom dollar they will also be the first to get out of it. Think about it?? They always do and always have in the past. What makes this time different?

Do we really think it's beyond the US to pull through this? Don't we think they have too much to lose? I'd like to hear someone's opinion on why if this is what they believe. Don't get me wrong I am not defending them.. from what I have learned this year about subprime, CDO's & CDS's it's frightening that the fraudsters responsible are not in jail! These instruments are like guns in the US and have managed to get into the wrong hands. Why? Because there has not been appropriate regulation from the Bush administration imo. It's like giving a gun to any redneck on the street and then not having police to arrest them once they start shooting at everything around them.

As far as rate cuts go. Imo Aus cut rates a. because they were too high and there was room to move and b. because the Aus gov all of a sudden realised that they were exposed to this mess in a much broader way than first expected. The rest of the world saw that as a panic statement which is why AUD got hit so hard imo (along with the fact commodities also declined). The US a. has no room to move on rates (almost zero now) and b. don't do anything because some other country does. They lead the leads on the markets and the financial systems and always will.

The fact that they don't need to buy up all the toxic assets they thought they needed to buy is a positive sign imo as it means the $$ can be spent elsewhere. If Paulson was smarter though imo he would have said that there was much less toxic assets out there than they first thought.. this would have really rallied the markets imo and it wouldn't be sitting at 8371 right now. If the markets are due to drop to whatever levels then they will, regardless of whether Obama gets into to office now or in Jan.