A rough week it has been in the financial market and by extension, the economy as a whole. It does not say much for the ‘fundamentals of the economy’ that it requires the government to take on hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilise the one part of the economy that more than anything else is behind the malaise in the economy through its credit pumping schemes especially in the housing market.

So the week ends with the stock market just a bit lower overall than where it ended last week. A very wild week which saw the Dow Jones average move by hundreds of points in the course of a day.

Not much I can do on my own other that hunker down and wait for better days to come.

Whereas the stock market remains relatively unchanged from last week, not so with presidential race. A week ago, John McCain was up by 1-2 points on the national polls and nearly drew even in the electoral college votes. But from the time he said that he economy was fundamentally strong on Monday morning, McCain has been playing catch up to Barack Obama. While McCain continued to make gaffe after gaffe and keeps blaming Obama for the crisis, Obama has been more stateman-like and appearing more clear-headed and cool about the situation. This is an Obama which voters are comfortable with and it is making a difference in the polls Obama is now leading in most of the national polls and several states are swinging in his favour

But it is a long time to election day, plenty of time for various events to keep popping up that may change the course of the election. A potential one is next week for the first of the presidential debates. Expectations are not that high for Obama as his debate performance in the Democratic primaries was just adequate. The debate is supposedly about foreign policy, a strength of John McCain apparently, but look towards seeing it more focused on economy issues rather the foreign policy issues.

It is good to be in the lead once more but as Obama has found out several times this years, such leads are made of dust and not for a moment should Obama waver on putting forth his economic plan and keep pressure on McCain.