Dow Jones Drops 513 Points: As Bad as Congress' Approval Rating

Dow Jones Loses 4.3% of Value: Worst Performance Since 2008

Today is not Stock Market Day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 513 points (4.3% of its value) on August 4, its worst single day since 2008. The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for the Dow Jones didn't come out of nowhere: it's been losing value all week. However, it's a great day for stockbroker facepalms.

• Dow Jones Industrial Average: You Could Ski It
  

Why are investors so hinky? A few (simplified) reasons:

1. US economic growth has been glacial
2. Thanks to the debt ceiling melodrama, the whole world knows that the US government is about to stop spending money on stuff
3. The rest of the world sees how easily the US economy can be hijacked by non-market forces
   
4. The Euro-zone economy is also in horrible shape

Markets are driven by perception.

US Congress in the Spotlight Over the Economy

If you thought the stock market was having a bad day, check out Congress: according to a NY Times/CBS poll, Congressional approval rating is at an all-time low, with 82% of those polled pretty much hating Congress right now. 75% of those polled don't believe that the debt-ceiling wrangling had anything to do helping everyday Americans.

The Tea Party enjoys an approval of 20% of those polled, which, considering recent events, strikes us as surprisingly high. Americans polled said that job creation was more important than spending cuts, apparently not buying the (somewhat spurious) argument that maintaining tax cuts for the wealthy will somehow create jobs.