I'm writing this just after seven in the morning Pacific Time.  After working all night, I was getting set to go off to bed when I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach — a sense that the bail-out bill crafted by the geniuses in Washington wasn't going to work, that the markets would feel the same way about it . . . and that the American economy was about to go under, suddenly, in one fell swoop, today.

I turned on the television and saw that the Dow Jones Average had plummeted three hundred points in less than half an hour.  I hope things won't continue in that vein, but I have a horrible premonition that they will.  If the House Of Representatives approves the bail-out bill in the next few hours and the market continues to fall, it means that Washington has waited too long — dithering around for a John McCain photo-op and other exercises in political posturing and giving more banks time to fail, undermining investor confidence beyond repair.

As I head off to bed once again, I have a feeling that I might wake up in a world that has been utterly changed.