Brian,

Throughout my lifetime, I've been waiting for the US Debt to sink the country - and it finds a way out each time. You could tell me it's different this time, but at each obscene level of debt in the past (whether $1B, $10B, $100B, $1 trillion, $10 trillion) - the American economy works through it. Maybe you're right, this time it may be different, but I wouldn't bet against it (at least not yet).

It's remarkable how fragile the markets acted. Unless I saw it with my own eyes, I could not appreciate how quickly we got to 10000 Dow Jones....literally within seconds, as I was responding to Sparky's message, it dropped 300+ points...... just amazing. It's definitely a jittery market, as everyone is trying to avoid the May 2008 scenerio - no one wants to be last leaving the party again.

What is more amazing is the UP MOVE - even in a small stock like CLL, there was no pause, it just went straight down and then up. If the sell-off wiped out outstanding bids postulated, how did buy orders instantly appear to take the price back up to it's pre-drop price and no further? Why didn't the buying frenzy carry the price higher? I was at my screen, and I couldn't type a buy order fast enough to catch the wave.....

Strange how it all unfolded and then instantly recoiled.

Good luck,

Booster