The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell just over 500 points today, the largest point drop since July, 2002, but according to the Huffington Post, one of the presidential candidates still doesn’t get it:
John McCain may want to refine his economic message a bit more during this potentially disastrous week for the financial sector.
On the campaign trail in Jacksonville, Florida, the Senator declared this morning that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” despite what he described as “tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street.”
In a period when many investors have seen as much as 7 years of stock market gains wiped out in just two weeks, how can the economy’s fundamentals be strong? The jobless rate is up, consumer spending is weakening, people are leveraging their credit cards more to cover expenses, property foreclosures are significantly higher…
Bank of America stock also saw a dramatic downturn on Monday, falling 18.8% in reaction to the $50 billion sale of Merrill Lynch. Ken Lewis called his weekend purchase the “strategic opportunity of a lifetime” ” but investors obviously disagreed.