This a.m. my power went out prior to the market open. I wasn't wigged out or anything. I took advantage of my 'powerless' time frame by doing some household things. However, the most pleasant thing that I did was picke up my Zurich Axioms and decided to read through it again (in the beautiful a.m. time frame) in the beautiful a.m. hours (outside with my puppitos). The aphorism about you can never step into the same river twice is equally true for books, I think. What you get out of a book is what you bring to it. And I bring something differently to this book than what I did (1) during my first read; (2) during my narration of the axioms; (3) and this read. It might be worth your time to pick up one of your favorites and step into that river again.

For those of you who are interested in credit derivatives, there is an interesting article in The Economist which you can find here. I think you will find it very accessible and will reinforce/ alert you to some of the issues.

I would also encourage you to listen to Doug Noland's interview on Financial Sense Online. What I found particularly interesting about this interview was Doug's clear discussion about the enormity of financial arbitrage and the wealth that it is creating--divorced from goods/services production--'ether'- value (my term) if you will. I'm not levying any judgment. But because of the enormity of these transactions, any change in sentiment regarding macro/micro factors will bring instantaneous reaction in fairly large magnitude and with immediate consequences (for good or naught).