As Hillary Clinton yesterday certified the topical meme that America's druggie appetites and gun trade are responsible in large part for Mexico's blood-drenched "narco wars", there was some good news in the battleground border city of Juarez: Murders are down from 15 a day at the beginning of the year to around... two per 24 hours.

In a city transformed by gang-fueled violence into the bullet-pocked Beirut of the western hemisphere, any ray of light is precious, even though the presence of several thousand Mexican army troops was probably the biggest factor in the slaughter downturn.

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OK. I'll confess: I'm one of the many who've expressed loads of doubt over Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner's and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's plans to breathe life back into the dead bulls and rummy bears that have collapsed on Wall Street, and to spark at least a fever dream that will thaw our frozen banking industry.

Long-range, we must keep the markets afloat if we're to continue as a capitalist system. Obama and Geithner are walking the tightrope of preserving investor (and trader) confidence while changing the playing field with re-regulation. No one on Wall Street is stupid or crazy enough to think restoring our finanicial viablity will mean a return to our now-lost go-go status quo.

Are they?

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