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Henry, I hope you're right. The phrase "dead cat bounce" keeps rattling around in my noggin.

The DJIA is not the market and the market is not the economy. The market is mainly based on sentiment/confidence and, as Henry noted, that's been dropping steadily as the credit crisis mounted. The market will act mainly as a lagging indicator - when capitulation comes, it will be too late to do anything about it. I'm not sure that any one of the current crop of legislative proposals is the right approach, but doing nothing isn't an option.

It may already be too late. The Euro is tanking too. I noted today that the dollar strenthened against the Euro and gold, but crude prices went up. Not a good sign. This is shaping up to be a global economic meltdown. Europe hasn't even begun to come to grips with their credit issues. The Fed' is printing money like there's no tomorrow and our fellow citizens are griping about "bailing out Wall Street". I'm stocking up on canned goods and ammunition and I'm actually in a much better mood than I was yesterday...

CNN) -- The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera released a full transcript Monday of the most recent videotape from Osama bin Laden in which the head of al Qaeda said his group's goal is to force America into bankruptcy.

Al-Jazeera aired portions of the videotape Friday but released the full transcript of the entire tape on its Web site Monday.

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

Al-Jazeera executives said they decided to post the entire speech because rumors were circulating that the network omitted parts that "had direct threats toward specific states, which was totally untrue."

"We chose the most newsworthy parts of the address and aired them. The rest was used in lower thirds in graphics format," said one official.

U.S. intelligence officials Monday confirmed that the transcript made public Monday by Al-Jazeera was a complete one.

As part of the "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan," bin Laden cited a British estimate that it cost al Qaeda about $500,000 to carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, an amount that he said paled in comparison with the costs incurred by the United States.

"Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs," he said. "As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.

The total U.S. national debt is more than $7 trillion. The U.S. federal deficit was $413 billion in 2004, according to the Treasury Department.

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"My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire." Feb. 24, 2001
George W Bush..

I beg to differ... What bled Russia to death and almost bankrupted her was fifo and Cuba.

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