That will be the debate in the weeks ahead. Have the fundamentals of the UK or US economies changed much amid government intervention approaching the scale of the 1930s or is this a suckers rally destined to turn into a false dawn like so many seen in Japan during the 1990s? Only time will tell, but the massive surge in UK equities Friday on the imposition of a short-selling ban did cable a world of good as it had been the least-loved of the majors for many months. It now has the most to lose if the rally proves unsustainable.
Other than the short-selling ban, little has fundamentally changed in the UK while the US is making a herculean effort to rid the market of its overhang of bad mortgage paper. We can argue the correctness of that policy prescription but we cannot ignore its massive implication. We can only look at the UK and marvel at how timid an unpopular Labour government has been in trying (or not) to fix its own messes.
As Dylan said in Like a Rolling Stone : When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.