You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.

Now, for the first time, the President began to look genuinely powerful, even dangerous. This was a classic political coalition: it had worked in Medieval France. It was the long-forgotten bottom of the heap, allied with the formerly feeble top, to scare the hell out of the arrogant and divisive middle.

Take away America's money, and you've got a country of tribes.

If politics and business fail us, of course the military will be called in. In the developing world, the massive and repeated ecological disasters are quite commonly met by the military.

A lot of people are going to be watching the employment report for evidence of whether the economy has hit escape velocity.

The news should improve in the second half as likely Fed rate cuts begin to affect the economy and earnings momentum improves on easy comparison,