How rough was this summer for investors? The answer isn’t nearly as bad as the market mood, at least not for those who focus on quality companies that continue to post strong earnings.

Will the stock market ever recover? Where is the bottom for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 or the Nasdaq Composite--which hasn’t recovered since the last market blowup at the start of this decade--and when will we reach it?

Diane Francis sends word that Brent Fullard of the Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors has formalized the anonymous-tough-guy-Tory talk quoted in Ottawa’s political daily The Hill Times in April: Fullard has challenged Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to a debate, offering him 90 minutes to defend the Tax Fairness Plan. Fullard will rebut; he’s also pledged to underwrite a CAD50,000 minimum donation to charity to provide a little motivation for Flaherty.

Election years bring investors all sorts of anxieties. Aside from the various campaign promises designed to attract us to a particular candidate, we must also consider which nominee’s policy changes threaten to erode our financial well-being. Such considerations give new meaning to the term political plank, and pocketbook politics always hit home during times of economic and market malaise.

To hear some people tell it, national elections are always some version of good versus evil. One party is the great hope of the nation, while the other is leading us down the road to ruin. One party is full of upstanding “reasonable” people, and the other a bunch of lying philanderers.

All three US indexes trended down this week, though we caught a nice rally today when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke commented that he saw inflation slowing into 2009. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.3 percent; the S&P 500 lost 0.5 percent; and the Nasdaq Composite gave up 1.5 percent.

The US Dept of Labor reported this week that consumer prices spiked to a multiyear high. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) hit 5.6 percent for the month of July. And the headline number, which includes food and fuel costs, is in fact the focus of many dramatic, eye-grabbing article titles in the print and electronic media.

At the height of the US housing boom, my colleague Yiannis Mostrous made one of the more prescient investment calls I’ve seen. Writing in the advisory he co-wrote at the time, Wall Street Winners, he recommended a short sale of giant, government-backed mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The father of modern economics, John Maynard Keynes, was once asked in a debate how he justified changing his mind on certain key issues of his day. Keynes replied “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

All told, it was a tough week on Wall Street, though two of the three major indexes posted weekly gains. The S&P 500 posted a weak gain of 0.1 percent and the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.6 percent, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.6 percent.