WHOOPS

Posted at 6:04 a.m. ET

World markets are already reacting to the bailout package constructed in Congress.  The envelope please:

(CBS/AP) Asian stock markets fell Monday amid investors' skepticism that the deal reached in Washington over a $700 billion bank bailout would quickly resolve the bad debt crisis.

Adding to concerns of further global financial contagion was news Sunday that Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pledged more than euro11 billion ($16 billion) to Dutch-Belgian bank and insurance giant Fortis NV to keep it from insolvency.

"There's an increasing realization that the cleanup and the mending of all that's gone wrong is going to take an extended period to work through, and we're going to see an extended recovery period," said Jamie Spiteri, senior dealer at Shaw Stockbroking in Sydney.

I still want to know how all these bankruptcies and collapses occurred over a period of a few weeks.  Is there something we should know about the financial calendar?  Do they do these things between vacations?

In London, trading on the FTSE exchage got off to a weak start, despite the announcment that the British government was to nationalize troubled mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley.

You mean other countries have mortgage problems, too?  We're not the only bad people in the world?  Please tell that to the Ivy League.

U.S. stock index futures also fell, suggesting Wall Street would open lower Monday morning. Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 0.9 percent at 11,044, while Standard & Poor's 500 index futures were down 1.2 percent at 1,200.

And we may elect as president a junior senator from Illinois whose knowledge of economics begins and ends with clipping coupons at Stop 'n Shop.

I think I'll open a bank under my mattress.

September 29, 2008.