Initially having high hopes regarding President Bush’s $700 billion rescue floats, people are now discovering that there still isn’t a way to stop the “Titanic” from sinking. Therefore, lawyers are encouraging their clients to jump ship! Still, Wall Street brokers were hopeful that somehow, the floats were merely a sign that more would be magically done to repair the ship’s leak. However, on Monday, the Dow Jones industrials skidded more than 500 points and fell below 10,000 for the first time in four years.

According to the AP, “Investors around the world have come to the sobering realization that the Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue plan won’t work quickly to unfreeze credit markets. Global banks, hobbled by wrong-way bets on mortgage securities, remain starved for cash as credit has dried up.”

“The fact is people are scared and the only thing they’re doing is selling,” said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “Investors are cleaning out portfolios and getting rid of everything because nothing seems to be working.”

The bottom line is that the stock market is a leading economic indicator as to where the economy will be in six to nine months. And with only 98 stocks that rose on the NYSE and 3,114 dropping, it looks like we are headed for a tragic economic downfall in the weeks to come.

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