By Mark Gilbert

Like a drunk at a party, the bond market is starting to bump into tables, telling off-color jokes, talking too loudly and spilling drinks. The smart guests will steer clear before he starts screaming at his shoes and wanders off to pray to the porcelain.

Did you think a 950 billion-euro ($1.2 trillion) emergency backstop cobbled together by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May was the answer to Europe’s debt crisis? Were you expecting central banks to turn off the money taps as normal funding service resumed in the banking industry? Had you hoped the heavy hand of government would only briefly slide its interfering digits into the folds of finance?

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By PETE DU PONT

Summer is almost ended, and Americans are growing more and more skeptical about the coming fall–about our lack of jobs, our bigger and more expensive government, the higher taxes that will be coming soon, more expensive and less personal health care, and, most important, our declining economy.

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