Trust

Author Steven Covey was a guest on the Oct. 9, 2008 edition of "To The Point." He talked about trust and how contagious it is. He talked about distrust being more contagious and how these tenets apply to our current financial crisis. His words rang with crystalline clarity.

"You can't talk yourself out of a situation you behaved yourself into," said Covey, citing our banks and government. It's true. Despite all the charts and numbers and ratios, the simple human phenomenon of trust bears massively on our markets. I find that at once endearing and hopeful.

Let's hope that $700 billion will allow Our Boy Wonders to do some real nice behaving. It seems like they started last week, although it didn't catch hard enough to land the market on a solid rock bottom (and yes, that undertone you hear is Erin coming to terms with the fact that there was no way around the bailout). Maybe this week will be better.

And oh yeah, seeing all the international peeps talking around a table this weekend in Washington was A VERY GOOD THING.

I also think someone kicked John McCain in the pants over how his bloody red meat was feeding the Wall Street bear as well as his campaigners. Thank god he's publicly muted his rhetoric. When you scare vulnerable people into believing the man who is very, very likely to be at the helm in a few months is an cagey terrorist, that only goes to fuel the contagion of financial distrust. After all, The trillions lost in the market is coming right out of John Q. Public's wallet. Obama will do well to can the "erratic" talk as well and start acting like the President.