[Villages Kahuna]

You're right, Billie. I'm keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed, but all the pundits seem to be saying that our economy has "bottomed out" and that the stock market is a leading indicator of economic recovery.

Whatever steps taken seem to be working and I think everyone should be glad for that. There were all kinds of differences of opinion regarding what actions by the government were appropriate and might be effective, but it seems that few people thought that the critical economic problems could be solved without any government intervention.

It'll be a balancing act to make sure that the recovery continues on an upward slope, but the next objective seems to be for the U.S. to begin to cut and/or reallocate spending in order to begin to reduce the annual deficit and begin to whittle away at the national debt. A winding down of defense spending paralleling that of combat operations should help, as will some simple belt-tightening across-the-board. Maybe there's a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

We're going to get some "assistance" from the countries which have been buying our debt, for sure. The number of countries now participating in the bi-weekly auction of Fed paper has declined from 43 to 20. And China has again told the Fed that they should not be relied upon to increase the amount of U.S. debt that they hold. We've pretty much reached the limit of our borrowing capacity.

All we can hope for is the political will to accomplish these objectives. What's encouraging, I think, is that we have not been wanting for both the creativity and political will to face down the short-term economic crisis. We can only hope that the same political will can be re-sighted on the longer term problems.