All of this is political maneuvering for power grabs and is designed to scare the "little people" into panicking and demanding dramatic, often unwise action. It will probably succeed.
This market is NOT being moved by small investors AT ALL. Almost all of them are on the sidelines. The market now ONLY moves through trades by VERY large players who have an agenda. They are not afraid of what government or anyone else is doing. They merely move the market to get someone's attention (i.e. Either do as we say or we'll create riots for you to deal with). It's really pretty simple.
Very true!
Uh, actually the S&P 500 and NASDAQ drops were greater than the DOW’s drop.
At times (ok, most times) it's really despairing so many knee-jerk posts blaming Obama, the debt ceiling, or any other economic data for that matter. As you observe, it's got absolutely nothing to do with any fundamental factors. In fact, it's all about the agenda. It's been a long time in the making (98 years to be exact), but we're nearing some kind of transition point.
Now that the debt ceiling has been raised, my guess is the oligarchs are demanding those extra $trillions to be immediately funneled into the markets, or else. Bernanke knows he can't fool people with another round of stealth QE. Nope, this time we-the-people have to literally beg for it; that way he can operate clearly in the open.
At some point when they determine the cries for money-printing have reached a fever pitch, they'll jump back in and send the Dow to over 20k. Of course, in real terms it will be worth far less than 10k a decade ago, but the sheep have proven time & time again that they react only to surface level stimuli.
The % of people who actually understand our debt-as-money system are probably under 1% - and that would still be 3m people. Hmm, make that .001%.