Dow Jones Slips Further

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped another 7.33 percent today, losing just under 680 points during the trading day. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq saw similar declines, marking one of the worst days on Wall Street in history. Today's decline brought the Dow's 52-week loss to 39 percent, and the monthly loss to just under 24 percent.

These declines have occurred despite more than 10 major government bailouts and unprecedented moves by the Fed and Treasury Department to stabilize the economy. At this point, it is safe to say that the U.S. government is powerless to stop the global financial crisis. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said today, "Americans should be confident that every effort is being taken to stabilize our markets." However, the fact that the government is doing everything it can, and failing utterly, should not inspire confidence. The federal government has employed every means available to it to stop the crisis, and has even invented new, questionable methods of shoring up credit markets. All of this has failed. We cannot know what will come next, but we can be sure that it won't be pretty.

More to come.