not dark yet, but it's getting there

Just when you think this whole economic collapse thing can't get any more strange. Politically, Still President Bush might as well make the remainder of his public appearances wearing a bill and oversize novelty webbed feet. The lame part will take care of itself. He's lost control of the party that voted him nearly unrestricted war powers. Surely it couldn't get much worse?

Then you look at the economic impact. Both the Dow and NASDAQ closed today lower than they were when Bush took office, meaning that 8 years of value have been wiped from the markets in the last few weeks. There is little to add to this stunning verdict other than context for this statement:

"It's a striking phenomenon," said Robert Shapiro, undersecretary of commerce during the Clinton White House years. "The reckless negligence and mismanagement of the country's financial markets by the White House, the Treasury and the Fed over the last several years has now produced a crisis that has wiped out all of the increase in the market value of America's companies from five years of record corporate profits, strong productivity gains, and reasonable growth. Bush has now run the table on presidential failure."

Read that context here.