Yikes! The markets are closed and so are you. The Dow ended down 373 — more than 3% — and the S&P 500 dropped nearly 4%. But there’s good news if you are, say, a Saudi Prince: Oil shot the hell up by $16 a barrel, the biggest single-day climb since the Van Halen album 1984. Why do investors hate Hank Paulson’s plan to nationalize the collapsing U.S. economy while destroying capitalism and providing crucial help to the nation’s starving hedge-fund managers? [Marketwatch/Bloomberg]

• WHOOPS: Dow down 449 for the day (-4.06%). NASDAQ down 109 (-4.94%). S&P 500 down 57.20 (-4.71%). The S&P is now down 26% from its peak of 1,565 in October. [Marketwatch]

THE NEW HOOVER: “John McCain wants to celebrate 9/11 every day, forever, by bombing any country he can recognize on a map, and that’s fine as long as it remains the harmless fantasy of a war-obsessed geezer kept far from the White House. That he still has no idea America is crumbling — its middle class, infrastructure, manufacturing base and banking system — is almost funny.” [AOL Political Machine]