So the American economic train wreck is unfolding before our very eyes. The question is whether it truly is a flat world in every sense or whether there has been decoupling over the last few years.

The pundits in Australia seem to think that the banks have been very conservative here in terms of the way they have structured their businesses because their fundamental businesses are so profitable. Let's hope so.

Not so the players who have been largely funded by debt. Hence the decline and fall of companies like Babcock and Brown. Who knows whether the giant Macquarie Bank will survive since their model is so reliant upon debt.

While doom and gloom inhabits the boardrooms of the western world and we all sit waiting to find out whether America will finally wake up to the reasons that we are in this crisis in the first place (the cost of waging an everlasting war) I tend to think that it is time to start looking for the opportunities to emerge from the wreck.

After the storm and the mayhem comes the time to clean up and rebuild. And the ones who do best are the ones who are preparing for the rebuild as the eye passes overhead and the winds start to crank around to blow from the opposite direction. Its time to look both optimistically and opportunistically at what is happening. And let's hope that in amongst it the people of America vote for sanity at the next election.