Is there a Plan B?
A few random thoughts in the gloom this morning: 
• The Tories have a difficult game to play trying to persuade people they have anything very useful to say in the current financial crisis.
• The bloom is off Vince Cable. Once a beacon of light in grim times, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman may have devalued himself with his call to suspend the independence of the Bank of England (when he boasted to his party conference that he wouldn't, while the stupid Tories might).
• Among the casualties of the banking crisis, we must now add Scotland's First Minister and SNP leader, , whose dream to be part of an arc of prosperity that included an independent Scotland, Ireland, Iceland and Norway now looks more like the stuff of nightmares.
• As markets continue to plummet, it is becoming clear that, contrary to earlier reports, Gordon Brown cannot walk on water.
The great Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes once said that cutting interest rates in a slump was like pushing on a piece of string - in other words, it had no effect. The world's leaders must be worried that the same could be said for all of their policy responses to the banking crisis.
They've the banks, guaranteed inter-bank lending, cut rates and ensured the financial markets were awash with - yet still banks won't lend to each other (never mind to you or me) and stock markets remain in freefall.
Everybody (bar government ministers in public) is assuming that the bank rescue plans have come too late to stave off a serious global - and that's what's prompting further massive falls in the world's stock markets.
Yesterday, the Dow Jones suffered its second biggest drop in a single day, down almost 8%; in Japan, the total value of the country's top companies plummeted by nearly 10% overnight; this morning, the FTSE is already down another 5%. Mr Brown should stop smiling.
The latest economic statistics on both sides of the Atlantic are unanimously grim: British inflation and unemployment are worse than they've been since the early 1990s and American retail sales are down 1.2%, the biggest fall in three years.
The US Federal Reserve's beige book, a key survey of upcoming economic conditions, reveals pervasive weakness across the US, with tight credit, deteriorating consumer spending and a weak labour market.
Even emerging economies, including China, are starting to look fragile. So much for so-called "decoupling" theories suggesting that they could carry on regardless, even as the West went to hell in a handcart. Always nonsense - now seen to be so.
The only "good" news is the collapse in oil and food prices. Indeed, all industrial commodities are on the slide - but is that really "good" news? When collapse, it is proof positive that we're heading for a serious recession.
This morning, our guest of the day is Christopher Meyer, once our man in Washington DC. We'll discuss with him why unprecedented global co-operation doesn't seem to be working. We'll look more closely at the bank bail-out plan: is it just a temporary failure or will it simply not work - and if it doesn't, is there a Plan B?
And is our this morning - topical with the release of the - and we'll look at the current presidential election campaign after last night's final McCain-Obama debate with Sir Christopher and .
McCain actually did rather well but polls show that Obama was regarded as the clear winner. It looks like McCain and the Republicans are cruising for a bruising.
Let me know what you think about any or all of the above using the comments box below.
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