The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted more than 500 points — its worst session since the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan offered a woeful outlook of America's economic situation, saying the crisis with the country's financial institutions was as dire as he had ever seen in his long career, and predicting that one or more of those institutions would likely collapse in the near future. "There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen and it still is not resolved and still has a way to go and, indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes.

Today -- when 148-years-in-business investment firm Lehman Brothers has gone bankrupt, and it's the biggest bankruptcy in history.

Today -- when investment firm Merrill Lynch, tetering on disaster, had to be rescued from a similar fate by Bank of America. Merrill Lynch had net losses of more than $17 Billion this year.

Phil Gramm, who was co-chair of McCain’s campaign, is not just another lobbyist. He is the man most responsible for the repeal of Depression-era banking regulations that have led directly and inextricably to much of today’s economic turmoil, and parlayed that classic example of legislative legerdemain into a lucrative lobbying career for the very people who scratched the smug Texan’s back — as well as McCain’s — on Capitol Hill. Gramm was the biggest of the big guns behind the 1999 repeal of the banking regulations — the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — which was officially called The Financial Services Modernization Act. Passage of the law was greased with an astonishing $300 million in lobbying money, and it encountered little opposition other than from those old-fashioned banks that actually insure your deposits. One of many consequences of the repeal was that a year later the Swiss bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. A year after that, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm and has since energetically lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department on banking and mortgage issues. This has included rolling back state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers that led directly to the subprime mortrage meltdown, which cost USB more than $19 billion in writedowns and the prospect of massive job cuts. We can be certain that even more wrack and ruin will be in the offing with a McCain presidency. This includes more of the Rich Come First economic voodoo that the Bush administration has visited upon Main Street while Wall Street investment banks got fat and happy until their greed bit them in their collective ass and they had to come begging for taxpayer bailouts. Which of course they are getting, no (serious) questions asked. Considering the pain and suffering that Gramm’s masterwork has caused ordinary Americans, it is not hyperbolic to say that he is a terrorist, he just doesn’t wear funny looking headgear and carry a Kalashikov.

Today, John McCain said once again, "… still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

John McCain lives a lavish super-rich lifestyle on his wife Cindy's secret 100 million dollar fortune! He won't tell the American people exactly how rich she is, but his own tax returns give a sneak peak. Now this is a true elitist life-style with servants, care-takers at some of his reported 8 homes, and personal assistants.

McCain reported paying $136,572 in wages to household employees in 2007. Aides say the McCains pay for a caretaker for a cabin in Sedona, Ariz., child care for their teenage daughter, and a personal assistant for Cindy McCain.