Jim:     How could we get worldwide, coordinated rate cuts and still go down 180 Dow points?... Especially when the market is about as oversold as I've ever seen it in the last 20 years?...

Can anything save ths market?...

Maybe. But not these little cuts. These cuts are simply too little, too late, at least to save the stock marketin 2008... if certainly not the economy.

The stock market said today that the cuts need to be much bigger, much more aggressive...

The broad market, at one point, was up, and that was because I think they were cheering that the Central Banks are worried about inflation anymore... they recognize it as deflation... but a half-point cut doesn't do a thing to help near-term earnings, and when you have bad earnings, like you had with AA, the stock gets killed, okay...

These cuts will not help you make big money in the market, despite what you heard all day about this being the opportunity...

They will help banks make more money off what's known as the net interest margin... They help the prime rate come down... These are good things that are often ignored by the media... But, again, they won't matter until late 2009, because they're going to cut, cut, cut... like little salami slices, instead of going in there with the chipper shredder.

We have distinguish what this means for the stock market and what it means for the economy.

Let's start with the market...

These cuts are way too late... I am making that point, because you have to understand how the market could go down. They're way too late to make you money in stocks, plain and simple... and they're also too shallow... Remember, our friend (previous Federal Reserve chairman) Alan Greenspan, took rates (down) to 1% in 2003, and they're 1.5% now. That wasn't a recession. That wasn't even a potential Great Depression. It was just a tough economy, and rate are already too high versus then. We're much worse off. I mean, in 2003, were we worried about ATMs not working? And I'm not talking about "out of order." I'm talking about unable to spit out money...

Bernanke only takes rates down to 1.5% and doesn't give a statement saying there's more to come... What happened here? It took a 2,000-point decline in the Dow to at least give us a half point. Hey, maybe another 2,000 points, he'll give us another half... and then, another 2,000 points, and we'll be home free. Yeah, by that formula, we go down to Dow 7,500 before he swings into action for the next half point.

In 2003, we had a Fed chief who knew what he was doing... who gave us clear direction that rates were going lower if business didn't turn. Now we've got a guy who's cluless, who won't tell us whether rates will come down... who gave a speech yesterday where he talked about inflation and deflation. He never said deflation... he said, "slowdown."

The guy's been behind the curve for a year. He's embarassing. I've called for his firing and no one's listening. Plus, let's not forget that rates in Europe, which - though this may be hard to believe - is now starting to look worse than the U.S., are probably 3 percentage points too high. I don't even want to go into what they're thinking... they obviously know even less.

Throw in the fact that the SEC still hasn't reinstated the "uptick rule"... Forget Lenin, Chris Cox (SEC chairman) is now starting... You know who Chris Cox is? He's Kruschev! He's banging on the desk, he's banging on the podium and he's shouting, "We will bury you!" Or at least your stocks.

There are so many obstacles to our going higher...

We still have mark-to-market accounting. Oh, that's really smart! We didn't get an extension of the short ban... thanks a lot, pal!... And our economy is still being run by the same complacent and erratic crew, still trying to justify why the "too big to fail" bank, Lehman, went under... Oh, there are no buyers... I don't care that there are no buyers... find one!

They managed to mess up almost every step of the way, worrying about inflation, when we are headed into the biggest deflationary spiral since the Great Depression.

So don't be puzzled about why the rate cuts didn't help... Don't be puzzled about why the market didn't end up...

However, this global round of (rate cut) easing has done something that's more important than saving the market in 2008... They can, at the very least, put us on a path, where the Great Depression scenario could maybe come off the table...