Foot in the Mouth Award for today goes to Senator Chris Dodd, who famously, and it seems, unilaterally, decided to let the World know that the U.S. might be nationalizing a few banks for a little while (whatever that means).

I am not 100% sure, but it seems to me that that particular policy decision is not up to the good Senator from Connecticut. Nonetheless, Senator Dodd's reckless verbalization of this possible outcome caused quite a commotion in the stock market, which is just what we needed . . . thanks Chris.

The last award to be given out today is the coveted WTF? Award, which goes to Bernard Madoff. I know. I know. It is so unfair to be giving so many awards to Bernie, but really, he deserves this one. Bernie gets this particular award because it now seems that he had not bought any stocks (as in NONE) with the proceeds of his "investment funds" for more than 13 years. That is one heck of a long time to keep this thing going.

NO STOCKS. He was just taking the cash in and sending out checks. Banks saw the deposits and cleared the checks. Trading firms (his own) were supposed to have cleared his trades ($50 Billion is a lot of assets to pretend to be trading - no one at the trading firm noticed there was no activity?) Sophisticated fund managers were sending him hundreds of millions of dollars. Accountants came in and audited. Federal agencies visited from time to time.

HE BOUGHT NO STOCKS. That is truly amazing.

It will certainly be interesting in the months and years to come (for those of us who dodged this bullet) to find out how he did this. And, we will also learn more about who else was involved because no matter how much of a wizard he was with Excel and Word, there is no way Bernie did this on his own. No chance.

Headed back onto the Road tomorrow. Return midweek. In the meantime . . . take a deep breath and repeat, as necessary.