Wait, did the Wall Street Journal just use "Epic Fail"? That is awesome.

No kidding, now I'm waiting for the phrase, "Don't mix guns".

It could be the panic from yesterday has subsided and cooler heads are back in charge. Perhaps the talk of raising the deposit insurance limits has calmed the markets. Maybe bargain hunters couldn't resist some of the prices.

The initial jump in futures yesterday and the actual prices at the opening bell is likely the cooler heads. Many old time Wall Streeters are saying we'll weather this just fine. The jump later in the day is probably the announcement by the SEC that rules for pricing loans and mortgage backed securities would be reviewed and likely changed.

Changing those rules would instantly revalue many of these "bad" securities and turn balance sheets into much more attractive documents. The present rules forced banks to value these at market rate in a market that didn't want to buy them. Now they may not have wanted to sell either but they had to report them at a lower value and that screwed up their balance sheets. This change will renew faith in the banks and stabilize the system.

It's funny how once things got serious all the different agencies and congress got serious as well. For gosh sakes why can't they be serious all of the time?

(On a side note, can I just say that the FDIC has done a magnificent job handling the sales of Wachovia and WaMu?

Actually in WaMu's case it was more of a giveaway than a sale.

The architects of the bailout failed to make their case to the American people.