Stock Market Suffers Record Losses Since Obama Victory

In the two days of trading on the NYSE since the presidential election, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has lost a record-breaking 929.49 points.  After the Dow closed at 9625.28 on Election Day, Barack Obama was declared the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election just a few hours later.  The Dow responded by closing at 9139.27 (486.01 point loss) on Wednesday, then 8695.79 (443.48 point loss) on Thursday.  As of today, November 7, 2008, The Dow has not had a bigger two-day point loss in its 80-year history.

How does the percentage loss compare with historical losses?  It's almost as bad.  The 9.657% decline is the 13th worst in history and the worst since the market crash of Oct. '87.  In fact, as you can see below, excluding the week of Black Monday, the Dow's 2-day losses were the worst since the Great Depression.

	Date	2-day point change	2-day % change
1)	10/19/1987	-616.35	-26.171%
2)	10/29/1929	-71.15	-23.621%
3)	10/20/1987	-405.72	-18.058%
4)	11/6/1929	-41.38	-15.129%
5)	7/21/1933	-14.87	-14.356%
6)	10/28/1929	-38.83	-12.966%
7)	10/10/1932	-7.81	-11.783%
8)	7/20/1933	-12.41	-11.420%
9)	5/14/1940	-16.50	-11.397%
10)	11/12/1929	-26.79	-11.326%
11)	5/31/1932	-5.25	-10.502%
12)	11/13/1929	-21.70	-9.846%
13)	11/6/2008	-929.49	-9.657%

Source:  Yahoo! Finance

It's curious that the Obama supporters have been claiming that only Obama can "fix" the economy when the stock market, the backbone of the U.S. economy, is clearly preparing for the complete opposite.  I wish that only the Obama voters would get what they deserve, but unfortunately, as demonstrated on Wall Street this week, they're going to drag the rest of us down with them.

For all of you greedy baby-boomers out there that were so worried about your retirement savings under Bush and have been clamoring for "change"?  Don't come running to the rest of us to bail you out when your president of "change" wipes out the rest of your retirement by destroying confidence, taxing you up the wazoo, and saving Social Security by raiding your 401k's and IRA's!

Obama's election victory hasn't even been validated by Congress yet, and history is already looking poorly upon his administration.  In the 2012 election, when the GOP gets an easy victory over Obama, the only question will be which president did more damage to the U.S. economy:  Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter?

The Washington Times Tells the Hidden Truth About Kerry's Tax Hike Plan

By Donald Lambro
The Washington Times

John Kerry promised in the second presidential debate not to raise taxes on people making less than $200,000 a year, but critics of his revenue-raising plan said yesterday that it would hit people who earn less and further complicate the income tax code.

One critic notes that the Democratic candidate's promised tax increases probably would fall on many of his supporters "who believe they are middle class."

Mr. Kerry's campaign Web site states that he would "restore [sic] the top two tax brackets to their levels under President Clinton," which were set at 39.6 percent and 36 percent respectively until President Bush cut all the marginal tax rates in 2001 — lowering the two highest to 35 percent and 33 percent.

The lower of these two top tax brackets applies to single people who earn at least $143,500 and married couples filing jointly who have a combined income of $174,700 or more. Thus, a two-earner married couple filing jointly, each making $87,350 a year, could be taxed under the higher tax rate that Mr. Kerry proposes if he applied it to the income brackets that are currently in the income tax schedule used by the Internal Revenue Service.

Read the rest of the story.