Scrutineer: US bail-out offers a beacon of hope amid global financial gloom

GOOD morning, Armageddon Day. This is the day of reckoning, when the US administration's desperate $700 billion (£380 million) bank bail-out plan is tested in the markets. The script for a financial disaster movie could hardly out-scare what we have been through this year. And today is the day of judgment.

"Thumbs up" could see us pulled from the brink of an epochal slump and the foundations put in place for a gradual easing of credit strains and a return of confidence.

"Thumbs Down" could catapult us into an intensifying financial collapse and glo...