Last week's battle over spending strengthens one of the pillars of this bull market.

The Fed's managing an unstable balance of titanic inflationary forces against the risk of deflation.

Tomorrow's likely record low funds rate has little to do with how the Fed now operates.

A zero rate and a humongous Fed balance sheet -- good for now, but not forever.

Deflation-fighting is the Fed's Job One now -- unfortunately its best weapon is inflation.

We don't see the case for a secular collapse in consumption.

With the Fed maximally easy now, risk tolerance gradually returns to credit markets.

Let's review the baseline: how we got here, where we are, where we are going.

Lagging macro news is horrible, and may be for a while -- but risk-tolerance is coming back.

Another bank crisis is brewing, there's no Treasury secretary, and Congress and Obama spar over TARP.