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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins and this is the World. Stock markets are surging across the globe today. The World's Jason Margolis has been looking at what's driving the rally, which Jason is a pretty good departure from the steady diet of depressing economic news of late.

JASON MARGOLIS: Yes, some good news. Today twenty of the world's leaders stood shoulder to shoulder and smiled for the cameras. And that's something, according to one person I spoke with, Gillian Tete, who runs the global markets coverage for the Financial Times.

GILLIAN TETE: The sheer site of world leaders standing together on a stage and actually managing to issue a joint communiqué that indicates they recognize that the situation is serious and they need to do something is progress in itself.

MARGOLIS: Edward Alden at the Council of Foreign Relations agrees: any small blip of good news is something for investors to grab onto.

EDWARD ALDEN: So you've seen a small increase in factory orders, you've seen car sales falling somewhat less dramatically then we had expected them to fall.

MARGOLIS: But have the fundamentals of the economy changed to warrant the surge in worldwide share prices?

ALDEN: No. I don't think so. I don't think there's any indication that the fundamentals have changed. But you could turn the argument the other way, which is to say that a lot of these companies were probably oversold, that the news was not negative enough to have driven stock prices down as far as they are. So the question everybody wants to know is this sustainable? And I don't have a crystal ball here anymore than anyone else does. I think it's probably not.

MARGOLIS: Gillian Tete at the Financial Times doesn't have a crystal ball either. But she does know that the fundamental problem hasn't been fixed: The so-called "toxic assets" from home loans that went bust are still out there, mucking up the system.

TETE: So the question remains: How is the western world going to get rid of those toxic assets?

MARGOLIS: That reality will set in over the next few months, according to Desmond Lachman at the American Enterprise Institute. But he proffers no guess as to whether the world's stock markets will go up or down. Instead, Lachman reminds us of what British economist John Maynard Keynes said.

DESMOND LACHMAN: He regarded the stock market as akin to a casino, or that was like a card game, where you were bluffing as to what real values were. The other Keynes story is that he told somebody who wanted to sell the market short that he had to be careful because markets could stay irrational for longer than the person could stay solvent.

MARGOLIS: Lachman's warning: don't put money in the markets that you can't afford to lose. Of course, on the other hand, if you don't play the markets, you can't win. Sorry no crystal ball here either. For the World, I'm Jason Margolis.

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