Happy Thanksgiving Day!

That's for all you Canadians out there. For you Americans, you'll have to settle for Happy Columbus Day!

And another example of where Canucks are ahead of the curve, Happy Election Day Eve! I haven't been following the Canadian elections all that closely, but it seems that from a distance, there is not going to be a huge shift in power tomorrow.

The market meltdown has slowed, but I doubt that the bottom has been reached yet. I think that the best we can hope for is some stability at or near where we are now until the effects of the various bailout plans can be seen. Then we'll have to ride out the recession caused by years of this irrational financial exuberance. There is more bad news out there in that the US housing market hasn't bottomed yet, and no where in all the financial analysis do I see the effects of the hundreds of billions of dollars the US has borrowed to pay for their various wars.

It's been painful to watch Bush try and instill confidence in the financial markets. I think we should give him early release to his ranch, on the condition that he keeps his mouth shut and wears the monitoring bracelet on his ankle.

It the polls are anywhere near accurate, and barring an unforseen catastrophe, Obama will be our next president. It will be a refreshing change to have an intellectually curious president who can speak in complete sentences. That alone could instill some confidence that the world is not collapsing around us.

Oh, and congratulations to Paul Krugman, my favorite economist and one of my favorite columnists, for winning the Nobel prize for economics. I've followed him for years, and it's good to see him win the big one. I had thought for some time that he would win it sooner or later but I'm a bit surprised he won this year. And as an added bonus, it will piss off my right-wing-whacko friends who are already wallowing deep in their pissedoffedness.