Federal Bailout Saves U.S. Economy!
Now that the economy has been saved, by the government, we can all get back to the business of America, which is "waiting for handouts from John McCain." Remember how much John McCain hates earmarks and how when he pretends to be president he's always vetoing any bills with earmarks? Heh heh, he was just telling lies again. He voted for the bailout, and it is so full of earmarks, it is like, uh, a large container filled with earmarks. Pork earmarks, on pigs.
So, that was pretty much the last thing McCain had for a campaign thing, "I am the old fellow who will veto the pork earmarks," and even though it was never really true, it wassomething, and now it's over, too.
But how did Wall Street react to this brave passage of the Economic Rescue Legislation of 2008? Oh, everybody just sold off whatever stocks they had, at a loss. The Dow Jones index closed 156 points lower, or about 1.5%. For the week, that's a 7.4% loss and more than 800 points down the old money drain.
Hey, there's something good about the new Great Depression: With the Dow back in 10,000 territory, it's super easy to translate point drops to percentage drops. Got a hundred point drop? Well, that's about a 1% drop! A thousand points is 10% ... eh, and then we're at 9,000 so it's not as easy. Oh well.
Things were even worse in the broader markets, with the S&P500 index down 9.4% for the week, dropping below 1,100 for the first time since 2004.
So, it has been another wild week! This is how we start the fourth quarter of the year, with massive government intervention to the tune of 1.5 trillion dollars (of make-believe money), because remember the Fed also dumped $800+/- billion of "liquidity" into the markets, and that's just for this week. Also: Huge job losses, plunging real-estate prices, commodities falling, treasury yields tanking, oh and residential mortgage rates arerising, because why not?
Our friends and former corporate overlords over at Gawker are also expecting hard times, and have let go 19 of our comrades and will be scaling back some of the Underperforming sites. Guess it's good your Wonkette got out alive! (We're still alive, right? Anybody?)