Weekend Worriers

Whenever a bombshell discloses
After Wall Street on Friday night closes,
The market is fraught
All weekend with what
The chance of new highs or new lows is.

Listening to the weekend's feverish speculation as to the market effect of the S&P downgrade of US sovereign debt, one could not help but hark back to the Lehman failure in 2008, when the world waited breathlessly for the Asian markets to open and point to our global economic fate. Early results this time around indicate a sharp sell-off of anything risky, though not necessarily US Treasury bonds themselves, the risk perception of which has not really changed.