Analysts fail to recognize how successfully Wall Street has gotten between you and your money. After the 87'crash brokers went to street name accounts, and the brokerages went to pooled assets. Pooled assets game them a chance to play the market against their clients, something Goldman Sachs has done recently, to boost its assets.

It was an inside joke, the chief of equities at XYZ would come out and pound the table for GM stock, while his trading desk was dumping the stock into the rally. Cramer, the TV god, was accused of using CNBC to do this with stocks in his hedge fund account.

Nevermind that they were playing us for suckers, they had a piece of our paycheck, every month, our employee contribution their retirement account. They were grabbing fees left and right, not including the fees for leveraged buyouts, IPO's, etc. That wasn't enough however to keep the financial industry going, they also had the Presidents' Working Group covering their back. They had the full guarantee of the US government, to maintain market stability. Without the change to electronic trading such a bold move would have been impossible. Money would have had to be transferred directly into the brokerage account, and that would have left a trail, between the politicians and the stock market traders.

Wall Street morphed into a fee driven industry, caring little of the market goes up, or down, and actually hoping it does both, because volatility keeps the trade on. The stock market is like any market, buyers bring money to buy investment paper, each day. The growth of money brings new fees. The system is far more rational than anyone imagines. When the money supply begins to shrink, you get a correction.

When that happens a lot of Wall Streeters will feel very sad.

The process of Democratization in Iraq has been a steady decline from the goal of central rule. Democracy was never the issue, national sovereignty, and a strong central government, was the Bush plan for Iraq. Apparently the same process is now happening in Pakistan, which has WMD's. No mention in your article of the plan to put US troops in Pakistan, although it has been discussed. The descent into tribal provinces, such as is already happening in Afghanistan, represents a failure of the Bush policy, on all three counts. Was the policy simply mistaken in the first place, or simply mishandled, and what are the alternatives?

From the perspective of global security are we better off with another strong central Muslim nation with nuclear power, or is it preferable to allow this former nation to splinter apart. Obviously the invasion of Iran was intended to accomplish this purpose, to destroy that central government, and keep the various Muslim factions in their own private neighborhoods.

The truth about the Bush policy is that it doesn't know what it wants.

Its not hard to inflate paper assets, all it takes is a monkey and a printing press. Some wisdom is needed, not to overprint, and inflate the value of that currency,excessively, or allow the currency to fall in value, (print more). A great deal is made about the study of economics, but like its sister in the social sciences, psychology, which in the 1930's was going to save us from ourselves, but which has fallen into disuse, economics will follow a similar fate. Psychology is currently one part aversion therapy, hypnosis, and one part psycho-meds.

Economics is the science of money printing. It gets a little more complicated because private financial firms may create debt, and that debt is then monetized. Congress is supposed to control the money supply, they don't have to monetize Wall Streets debt, and at some point they may not.

The science of money printing is based on population growth more than anything, when a child is born in China, the Fed Chief has to make dollars for that child to spend. The other problem is when those dollars don't get where they are intended, but once the world population starts to shrink, this old economy will go the way of the dinosaur.

My only criticism is why did you choose Africa, instead of Mexico, where they are feeling the pinch of the Bush ethanol program, felt in rising corn prices. The Bush administration has been in talks to fold the US into a North American enterprise zone, with a single currency, and a single security umbrella for all concerned. Mexico is 3X the size of Texas, and has 12% arable land, but only 3% is irrigated.

To see Africa's problem with argriculture you need go no farther than Zimbabwe. Is the second colonial wave going to have any more last effect? None of the agricultural reforms you mention will happen without the change that would support these improvements. But right now I can hear some Archer Daniels executives dividing up their cyber-plantations, figuring out ways to control the land without a brutal occupying force, or complicit corrupt government officials.

Obama is handling McCain and Clinton simultaneously, and doing a pretty good job. If Obama were to outpoint McCain for any significant period of time, and then lose the nomination, that would take some air out of the Democratic balloon.

The way it seems at the moment, if Hillary wins, those high Democratic turnout numbers will come down to earth in the election, and the Republican swing voters who went for Obama will return to the McCain camp. The race suddenly gets a lot closer, so truncating this struggle should mean one thing, get on with Obama.

If it doesn't really mean that the Democrats are in trouble.