Ian Welsh

Well, the Dow has broken 8,000. As Jane noted there is no technical support below 8K, so where it ends now is not known. A historical low for a bear market, as I've written in the past is 6K, which is about 7 times earnings. The issue isn't just technical trading, it's the spiral of margin calls, where the lower the market goes, the more investors who have to sell in order to keep enough value in their accounts to cover the loans they've taken out. The term for this is an Ohmstead break.

Shorter Paulson, "700 billion to make sure my Wall Street buddies could pay 70 billion in bonuses was ok. 25 billion to save 3 million jobs, forget it."

The moment when China becomes a consumer driven society is the moment when the US loses its leadership of the world, and when if it's economy isn't in good shape, it crashes out.

Regular readers know I've had my doubts about Barack Obama. And have told me what they think of my doubts, too. But we're hearing that Obama has began calling around on Lieberman's behalf, and I'm getting a sick feeling in my stomach just like I did when I heard from contacts that Obama was twisting arms to get the bailout bill passed.

Courtesy of Burt Gonzales and Cheney have been indicted by a grand jury. The indictment is related to prisoner abuse at Wallace County Federal detention centers, which are run by Vanguard Group. Cheney has an investment in Vanguard and is charged with conflict of interest and "misdemeanor assault" on detainees through the company, while Gonzales is charged with using his office to quash an investigation. Get out the popcorn, this could

So, George Bush and the Republicans have said they don't want to give bridge money to the Big 3 to help them get through this downturn, or at least till Obama can restructure them properly. Nope, the 3 million job losses and two hundred billion cost of letting them go under is ok by Bush and Congressional Republicans. Hey, those suckers didn't vote for them anyway.

The chart to the left shows the losses and profits per car of some major car companies. John over at Powerline uses it to argue that there should be no bailout, because the Big 3 are so unprofitable it's just pointless. Let's do some simple math.

Fundamentally, this race is over and Stevens is sunk. The places yet to be counted lean Democratic. Guess the Republicans in his state didn't think it was worth leaning on the results so that Stevens could go back, and the Democrats could decide that he deserved a full investigation out of fairness no matter how long it took.

It seems Obama has offered Clinton State. It's an interesting choice, and there are a lot of Progressives who won't like it much, given Clinton's record of supporting the Iraq war and voting for the stand alone resolution making Iran's Republican Guards a terrorist organization, which made a part of the Iranian military "terrorists".

For Americans who are wondering what's the price of China using that huge foreign currency reserve to save the US's butt, this article is must reading. Basically what the author is saying is that the US has to do a full on IMF structural adjustment. Cut spending drastically, reorient the economy for export, get rid of any spending that isn't oriented towards exports, get rid of subsidies through the military and other BS, and so on.