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The Asian markets are open and no word on a rescue plan for crashing Citi. Exactly the same scenario as Lehman. No government, no investors. Amazing inaction again in a moment of crisis.

With all the attention on Citi and all the speculation about the possibility that it will go down, where is the discussion of Smith Barney and the many people who have accounts with them. Does a crash of Citi mean a crash of Smith Barney and the loss of some or all of the positions in one's accounts?

Obama is about two weeks late on this one, and probably could have saved us from the last three legs of this plunge had he had enough sense to make the appointment earlier.

Bob Nardelli, Rick Wagoner and Alan Mulally are to blame for the sharpest 2 day market drop that we have seen in years. Seeing such stupidity just caused a massive panic.

The SEC charged Mark Cuban, internet entrepreneur and NBA Dallas Mavericks owner, with insider trading. I thought it would be interesting to see what could be uncovered by searching his blog. Mark Cuban is one of the very few celebrities who have been blogging consistently for many years.

The financial services sector continues to contract. On top of the 23,000 jobs cut this year, Citi is now reporting an additional cut of 50,000 jobs, or 14% of its workforce.

It turns out that not one cent of the $700 billion TARP monies are going to be used for the original plan to purchase troubled assets.

There's a lot of bad news out there so I thought I would start a series that only focuses on the positives. I hope to post every few days. If you come across a positive story, leave me a comment below. I'll check it out and if it fits post it along with an attribution to you. Remember, there are always two sides to every story, and where things are bad there is also the good.

The hidden story in the economy is the fact that oil prices have collapsed. For the Sheiks in the Middle East and Vladimir Putin, this is bad. For people like you and me, it's great.

The AHA is coming up this weekend. There are a few good trades I see going in to the meeting. These are stocks I have talked about before, but there are good new reasons to looks at them

It sounds horrible to say, but it is true.

As expected, the Fed dropped rates by 50 basis points (half a percent) to 1%. The idea is to make it cheaper for banks and borrowers to get money. The problem is that banks still don't want to lend and consumers don't have the cash to borrow.

From Germany this morning, we can witness a trade that will be spoken about for years gone wrong.

The one bright spot of this entire mess is that we can now afford to travel to places in Europe and Asia that had become prohibitively expensive over the last two years.

This goes beyond absurd. Many of the investment banks that have required public money to stay afloat, and some that haven't stayed afloat, are still planning to pay out billions in bonuses. This is an outrage.