Here’s some hilarious video from outside a McCain campaign stop in Ohio, where some older people chant “Keating Five,” which was the great group of corrupt senators (including John McCain) who caused the last collapse of American finance, in the late ’80s. This teevee reporter has no idea what they’re talking about, of course. [Blogger Interrupted]

Well, that was a fun week in finance news. So what did the markets get, after the U.S. government decided to end market capitalism and become the Soviet Bank of Soviet America? Stocks ended the week flat, that’s what. Monday morning, the Dow opened at 11,421. Today, after this unprecedented nationalization of AIG and promises of some “We Buy Your Crap” market run by the Fed, the DJIA closed at 11,388. (The S&P 500 was about the same, starting the week at 1,252 and ending at 1,256.) A half-trillion in new U.S. debt just doesn’t buy what it used to! [Schaeffers Research]

Turns out we didn’t need “stealth socialist” Barack Obama to pervert capitalist America into a crumbling nationalized economy run in private by a dome-skulled kleptocracy as our nation’s battered military wastes away in the forgotten bummer of a civil war in Afghanistan. WAIT A MINUTE that is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union! And the so-called Republicans did it, because they are Fiscal Socialists! MORE »

So you know how the Fed “bailed out” AIG with $80+ billion and now everything is okay? Right, it’s not okay at all. The $80+ billion allows the failed insurance giant an “orderly liquidation” of its assets. AIG is done. That is just one of the reasons why the markets continue to collapse today — the Dow’s down 240 at the moment, or 2.16%, the NASDAQ’s down 3.2%, and the S&P 500 is down by 3%. Oh, and the last remaining American investment houses took huge hits, again. Morgan Stanley dropped by thirty-freakin’-seven percent, this morning, and Goldman Sachs fell more than 20%. But what’s the bad news? MORE »

John McCain said, today, that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” He doesn’t even know what this is supposed to mean, of course, because all he knows about the economy is that the Navy gives you money and benefits and the Senate gives you money and benefits and Social Security gives you money and benefits and your Beer Heiress wife buys your seven castles and private jet. But what did the markets have to say? Uh, how about a 504-point drop in the Dow and a 4.7% plunge in the S&P? MORE »

McCain adviser and Krugman-obsessed NRO blogger Donald Luskin has one of his unintentionally hilarious “all economic statistics are a liberal conspiracy by the liberals” things in Sunday’s Washington Post, in which he gives the Obama campaign another Phil Gramm-style gift. “Things today just aren’t that bad,” he writes. And then he proudly quotes the Gramm “mental recession” bit! Is David Plouffe paying this guy? MORE »

If you own a house, it’s now worth negative nothing. If you’re a renter, your landlord is probably already in foreclosure and you will soon be homeless. Got some investments, maybe a 401k or whatever? You really don’t even want to look. Got one of those fancy jobs with benefits and health care and such? You will soon be unemployed, living in a Hobo Jungle down by the railroad tracks in the darkness on the edge of town. Happy Monday, everybody! But how can you blame this on McCain and his boyfriend George W. Bush? MORE »

Here are the current Top Headlines at Bloomberg:

• Payrolls in U.S. Fall More Than Forecast; Jobless Rate at Five-Year High
• Mortgage Foreclosures in U.S. Rise at Fastest Pace in Almost Three Decades
• U.S. Stocks Decline After Unemployment Rate Unexpectedly Increases to 6.1%
• Merrill Lynch Cut to `Sell’ at Goldman; Credit-Market Writedowns May Rise
• Gabelli Says Investors Have Good Reason to Worry About Earnings Next Year
• McCain Vows to Change Washington, ‘Restore’ Republican Party’s Principles

You know what we haven’t done in a while, due to fatigue or nerves or hangovers or whatever it’s called? A Comment of the Day, that’s what! Let’s do one right now, and honor Mr. or Mrs. NebraskashireGentry for this smart economic advice in response to our tragic 4 a.m. Great Depression II post. MORE »

We seem to be having some economic problems. Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad (the “B” in KB Homes) tells Bloomberg that “this is worse than any recession we’ve had since World War II.” Bloomberg editors noted, on Friday, that U.S. stock declines hadn’t been so lousy since June of 1930, during that Great Depression. Ah, hell …. MORE »

The Dow is down 370 points (2.5%) while the NASDAQ and S&P500 make similar terrible plunges, unemployment shot up the most since 1986, oil hit $138 and gasoline costs $4.50 a gallon at the start of summer, teen-age unemployment hasn’t been this bad since 1948, the housing collapse is really just beginning, foreclosures are at another new record high, even 3.5% of “prime” mortgages are now heading into default, and the dollar is worth a mumbled “Fuck you” in French. Things are looking up! MORE »