Whether you agree with them or not, the bailout programs will keep on coming. Keith Fitz-Gerald looks at the key impact these will have on the dollar, commodities and global stocks. He says we could be in line for a market rebound by mid-2009, and suggests six ways to prepare your portfolio now.

The masks are coming off. It’s the end of the party, now we get to see what people really look like. And it’s not a pretty sight.

Andrew Snyder says stock investors should look out for more market sell-offs around October 23 and November 4 and 5. This is when WaMu (OTC:WAMUQ) and Iceland’s bankrupt institutions face their CDS settlements.

The market for credit default swaps is unregulated, untransparent, and highly dangerous. And its estimated worth is over three times the total value of US equities. “A CDS is a bit like a blind date,” says Andrew Snyder, “at first, they sound like a fantastic idea. But we all know differently.”

The US subprime and credit crisis has cost the world over $7.7 trillion, according to a report released in February by Bank of America.

The worst could yet be to come. Shah Gilani in Money Morning says the $62 trillion market for credit default swaps (CDS) is a ticking bomb.

The derivative instruments - which offer insurance against default - are neither transparent nor regulated. But they are all at risk. And they are already causing huge writedowns in the banking sector…

Sometimes when you’re scouring the news, you see a statistic that renders you almost speechless. You can’t quite get your head around what it really means, you just know that it’s a knockout number.

Sometimes when you’re scouring the news, you see a statistic that renders you almost speechless. You can’t quite get your head around what it really means, you just know that it’s a knockout number.

Reading this Bloomberg story about the increasing demands being made on the Fed, I couldn’t help but think of the theme song to the vintage TV series “Car 54, Where are You?”