Another reason why we need active and competent regulations for Wall Street. None of this matters for people like McCain who own 12 houses, but normal Americans are trying to rely on retirement plans when they grow old. With McCain’s proposed cutbacks to Social Security, our retirement programs are even more important. It also brings us back to McCain’s radical plan to send our Social Security money to Wall Street. Yes, the same Wall Street who just lost $700 billion yesterday. Imagine the consequences of an unchecked market controlling our Social Security money, because McCain has been against regulations for 26 years in Washington. Twenty six years of protecting Wall Street. That’s the real McCain.

About $700 billion evaporated from retirement plans, government pension funds and other investment portfolios. It was by far the most stomach-churning single day since a financial crisis began to bubble up from billions of dollars in rotten mortgage loans that have crippled the balance sheets of one bank after another and landed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the control of the federal government. “We are in the middle of a deep, dark recession, and it won’t end soon. Here it is, and it is pretty nasty,” said Barry Ritholtz, who writes the popular financial blog The Big Picture and is chief executive officer of research firm FusionIQ.