Bad News Bear Market

Nice title, Bryan. Thanks, Bryan.

Anyways, if you have glanced at a television today, you've probably noticed that the Dow is down better than 2 percent today alone.* In fact, over the last week, the stock market has kind of gone into the crapper (I don't want to point any fingers *coughcoughcongress*, but it sure seems like the financial markets aren't happy about the U.S. being on the brink of default earlier this week).

Now, as someone who has just recently started to invest in the Roth IRA, this is vexing news. In fact, that aspect of my retirement portfolio has dropped about 7% in the last week alone (it has dropped a little more for my stocks, and a little less for my mutual funds [God bless 'em!]).

As a note to any politicians who might be reading this site, are you aware of the most important factor in one's reelection? In the immortal words of Bush I, "It's the economy, stupid." Republican or democrat, if the economy's tanking, so also will your reelection bids. While I am jaded enough to question the value of just one vote, I am just unjaded enough to take my irritation with the markets out at the polls.

I'm just saying, maybe it's something to think about before the next time the debt ceiling gets close to the limit.

*Update: as of market close, the Dow was down 4.31%. Awesome.