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With all the attention on Citi and all the speculation about the possibility that it will go down, where is the discussion of Smith Barney and the many people who have accounts with them. Does a crash of Citi mean a crash of Smith Barney and the loss of some or all of the positions in one's accounts?

Obama is about two weeks late on this one, and probably could have saved us from the last three legs of this plunge had he had enough sense to make the appointment earlier.

The Treasury Department has stepped in to help the Reserve Fund liquidate and pay back its investors.

TD Ameritrade is offering an attractive promotion to open a brokerage account with them. They'll give you 30 free days of trades and $100.

Bob Nardelli, Rick Wagoner and Alan Mulally are to blame for the sharpest 2 day market drop that we have seen in years. Seeing such stupidity just caused a massive panic.

Marketwatch writer Paul Farrell brings up some interesting points but I find things are never as bad as they seem, or as good. I also look at articles like this as a marker to a bottom in the market. The more great depression articles you see, the closer we are getting to some kind of low. Are we there yet? No. But we're getting closer.

The SEC charged Mark Cuban, internet entrepreneur and NBA Dallas Mavericks owner, with insider trading. I thought it would be interesting to see what could be uncovered by searching his blog. Mark Cuban is one of the very few celebrities who have been blogging consistently for many years.

The financial services sector continues to contract. On top of the 23,000 jobs cut this year, Citi is now reporting an additional cut of 50,000 jobs, or 14% of its workforce.

The UAW President Ron Gettelfinger is now saying that high gas prices are the cause for the Big Three collapse and that the companys' problems shouldn't be blamed on mismanagement or high labor costs. What a cop out.

Keeping your credit score up or repairing bad credit is more important than ever in a bad economic environment.

It turns out that not one cent of the $700 billion TARP monies are going to be used for the original plan to purchase troubled assets.

Paulson's comments today convinced me that what I feared is true - the wizards managing the economy really can't do much to stop the economic damage. The most they can hope to do is manage and contain it. The TARP, even in its new incarnation is not enough to stem the mortgage related bubble damage.

There's a lot of bad news out there so I thought I would start a series that only focuses on the positives. I hope to post every few days. If you come across a positive story, leave me a comment below. I'll check it out and if it fits post it along with an attribution to you. Remember, there are always two sides to every story, and where things are bad there is also the good.

The hidden story in the economy is the fact that oil prices have collapsed. For the Sheiks in the Middle East and Vladimir Putin, this is bad. For people like you and me, it's great.

The AHA is coming up this weekend. There are a few good trades I see going in to the meeting. These are stocks I have talked about before, but there are good new reasons to looks at them