I am not worried about the big, bad sub-prime/credit crunch/weak dollar/inflation thingy any more. I used be be, but not any more. I've had my fill of the nihilistic thinking and I've sweat the complexities of this morass more than I care to admit, but it just doesn't have any effect on me now. Go ahead - drop another shoe.

I'm not worried anymore because I'm gradually becoming downright excited about the inevitable ensuing windfall and economic boom that will materialize out of this mostly psychological crisis. In the same way that a deep value investor steps up to buy distressed out-of-favor-assets at fire sale prices, the federal government can, and has already started to, exhibit confidence and authority by stepping up and making a market in this illiquid paper. It can quietly establish a U.S. version of the "sovereign" wealth fund with the "republic" wealth fund. Irony is everywhere, and what may appear to be a government bailing of our financial institutions will eventually turn out to be the other way around.

I guess it's clear by now that the management at Ruth's Chris Steak House, Inc. (RUTH) really coughed it up with the recent Mitchell's Seafood acquisition. The deal was pricey even in the best of times, but as market conditions worsened, it became increasingly apparent that this deal was on the upper end of expensive when you factor in the depressing effects of a consumer driven bear market.

The beating the market has taken over the last six months or so has gradually but definitely softened up the hard heads and awakened the primal survival and protective instincts of the fiscal, monetary, and corporate powers that be.

Although the Dow (DIA) and the S&P 500 (SPY) didn't start to roll over until October, various industries were being pounded into submission under the surface, financials and homebuilders especially. The Darwinian nature of the market has it's predators (let's call them bears) and like all predators they gorge themselves on the weakest prey first (homebuilders). Having gathered strength in the form of profits they are emboldened to move up the food chain for the next sanguine unsuspecting kill. The process goes on until eventually they interface a force that is not so easily devoured. This is the proverbial "unexpected" and it is not discounted because it is just that. What the market has not properly discounted is that the Big Wheels of fiscal, monetary, and corporate interests have been quietly, deliberately, and concertedly closing in on all the things that ail this economy. While the pundits wail "no sense of urgency" and "too little to late," the writing on the wall suggests a major move is underfoot and likely to be more than a mouthful for bears heavily short.