That's not coming from us; I certainly haven't pushed it. Nobody's presented me with a case (for a trade). That's not something I think we need to do.

If we had won a number of those close games, we probably wouldn't have thought about doing the trade. Looking at the results, which were below our expectations, we felt we had to do something. Wally was a player other teams wanted.

We thought a ship had hit us.

We will try to convince him that it would be to his advantage to play with us.

We certainly don't need a reduction in rates and there are signals, like retail and trade, that show us the economy is going to rebound in the first part of the year.

The US financial position is rapidly deteriorating, due mainly to America's persistent and growing trade deficit. US ambitions to run the world, in other words, are heavily mortgaged. Like any debtor who borrows more year after year with no plausible way to reverse the trend, a nation sinking deeper into debt enters into an adverse power relationship with its creditors -- greater and greater dependency.