What a week, probably much like you and just about all the traders on Wall Street, I'm relieved the markets are closed over the weekend. I haven't even had a chance to take a deep breath and I don't know about you, but I dare not look at my 401k plan statement, that would be too frightening.

Meanwhile governments, treasury leaders and financial experts from around the world scrambled to try and stop the rot on the markets. Even the G7 were having an emergency get-together to discuss how to resuscitate the world's economy and ease the stranglehold of the credit crunch from causing the Great Depression v2.0.

The Dow dropped another 128 points and ended the week a battered and bruised 8,451.19 that is a decline of 18.2 percent from the previous week and massive 40.3 pecent down from the Dow's all-time high of 14,164.53 just a year ago.

It seems the global markets have been less than inspired by the various bailouts and rescue plans, so much so that one has to come to the conclusion that had they not meddled in the first place and left the markets alone and given time to correct without tampering we may have found ourselves in a similar predicament, only without the $trillions in debt. Still, hindsight is 20-20 and all that.

However, not all was doom and gloom as some investors on Wall Street saw a silver lining on the NASDAQ which ended up nearly 4.5 percent. Some even saw an investment opportunity with Apple as the Cupertino based company share price rallied, yes rallied, $8.06 or 9 percent to close up at $96.80. Just as well really, as virtually every printer in Silicon Valley had run out of red ink.

Investors and speculators must have been encouraged by the news today that Apple will announce the launch of a new series of lower priced macbooks on Tuesday. Good news, especially given the company had lost a staggering 40 percent in value over the last month on the fear that sales of high-end iPods and iPhones would be hit by the fallout from the financial meltdown.

At least now, even with our universally diminished 401(k) plans and decimated stock portfolios we can all still look forward to being able to afford a cool, but inexpensive laptop. Now all most people will need is a house with a wall to plug it in.

By the way, has anyone heard any more talk from marbled halls of Washington DC about shutting down social security and pushing people into investing their retirement savings into the stock market... funny that, me neither.