There’s no question that the big “winner” in the global financial crisis has been China. While for the past two years developed economies have been scrambling to keep afloat China has taken a nuanced approach to achieving its economic and political goals.

Asia is poised to become the “new” Detroit.

Bill is traveling for the rest of the week, but fear not – we will muddle through without him. A good bit of activity in the markets since yesterday.

The snowball that was Obama’s bailout plan rolled downhill this week, gathering to it all manner of trash and stones.

The news this morning is as grey and damp as the weather.  First, the U.S. stock market did nothing yesterday. The Dow ended down 9 measly points. The Dow is about 10% above its November low; have we seen the rebound already?

Warning that more pain will precede the positive, President-elect Barack Obama said in a weekend interview and press conference that he plans a massive investment in infrastructure to create jobs and stimulate grounded and long-lasting economic growth.

The fact that after over 30 years of consistent mismanagement and decline, there is still any discussion on whether or not we should allow the now significantly smaller “Big Three” automakers to fail is clear evidence that Washington has lost all common sense.

Gold surge fuelled by inflation fears… Deflation seen short-lived…  Platinum boosted, helped by auto sector optimism

A spree of economic props dominoed across Europe today (Thursday) all sharing the same theme – stopping the global financial crisis from getting worse. The European Central Bank took a drastic step to protect the Eurozone economy from shrinking further by lowering its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 2.5%.

The S&P 500 Index (.INX) opened today at 795. That’s the first time the index has been below 800 since April 1997. Eleven years of stock gains have vanished.