Posted 5:42 PM by steve

Yes, as the headline says, the Dow fell today to its lowest level since 1997, but that little nugget neglects to point out that in 1997 the Dow was in the middle of quite a nice run and well on its way to over 10,000.

Today, it is in free fall with hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars lost from 401(k) and pension funds and brokerage accounts, money that people were saving to pay for their retirement, a car, a down payment on a house, a vacation, their kid's college or their parent's elder care. Gone, gone, gone. And while the markets will (probably) recover some day, there are millions of people who will never be as good again as they once were.

Obama couldn't have screwed these people more if he had wanted. Note I'm not saying he didn't set out to do just that, only that I am not sure that any President could have done worse by us. Put another way, as bad and as clueless as Bush was, he never hurt our wallets in the way Obama has. Heck, I'm not even sure that if terrorists managed to set off a nuke in America that the markets would go down as much as they have in response first to Obama being elected and then his policies.