Megabank announces $19bn write-down, a rights issue to shore up its balance sheet and its chairman resigns. What does the stock market think? It marks the shares up 12%.

When recession comes earnings fall and those slippery PE numbers can start making fools out of us. The trick to smart investing, as Mark Slater once commented, was finding those companies where earnings were going up so fast that at some point the company would be re-rated by the market thereby boosting the share price.

At least the U.S. economy has started to look more like a soap opera and less like a Greek tragedy this week. Maybe we can get out of the current market situation without having to watch every player die a bloody, violent death, afterall… or maybe not. Either way, I’d bring a an umbrella to the performance. There may be splatter.