>My brother (who used to be a stock broker and is still very active on the market) called me this morning (at 8:30 am) and said that the market will go up 1000 points today.

I didn't used to be a broker but I don't take much nourishment from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson saying this morning that it would take hundreds of billions of dollars to resolve the financial crisis. Uh, isn't that quite a lot of money even by government standards?