With Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae showings signs of instability, as well as oil prices spiking to new records yet again, the Dow dropped to 10998.20. This is the first time the Dow has been 11,000 in 2yrs, and firmly places the market in bear territory. Treasury secretary Henry Paulson caused some feathers to ruffle by stating the 2 mortgage arms will remain unchanged. This is contradictory to earlier statements that the government would look at a takeover of one or both companies.

The news has made investors jittery since Freddie and Fannie hold over 1/2 of all mortgages in the US. Failure of either, or both, would be catastrophic. Further jitters comes from oil going back on the spike. It reached as high as $147/barrel, then fell to $145. On top of that, Citibank announced that it would sell one of it's bank holdings in Germany to a French company. For positive news, consumer confidence edged up slightly for June.

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This will haunt both presidential candidates, especially McCain. There seems to be no end in sight to the financial disaster brewing.

You buncha whiners!

I don't think it will haunt Obama, since he's like, not from the party that's been in the White House for the past eight years.

I know, I know, the executive branch doesn't have a big switch that says "Economy" with "Suck" and "Awesome" settings, but if you're talking politics, it's not gonna be a negative for him.

Only reason I say it will haunt both of them is because it takes away from issues they more then likely already prepared for before this all happened. Both of them more than likely had an ideal platform set up and then BAM! The economy went to liquid guano. Now, they're having to be more on the fly with something that isn't a strong suit yet is taking center stage.

RECESSION'd

Oh, you mean like actual governing and stuff BAH nobody cares about that! Poo-flinging is so much more fun!

But it's been trending downward for some time, it shouldn't really have come as a surprise to either candidate...

This morning I heard on the news that the AIRLINE INDUSTRY (of all people) want congress to intervine with oil speculators, saying that they're causing a false market.