Yesterday, the large investment firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the largest failure of an investment firm in 18 years. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch has been bought off by Bank of America. AIG, a large insurance company, needs $20 billion in government lending, which today NY Governor David Paterson said he will allow. To bring all of this into perspective, Dow Jones was down 355 points and NASDAQ was down 56 at the time this article was written.

What can be made of all of this? Well, simply the fact that we’re beyond a recession now. This has officially gotten serious, with a major investment bank failing and an insurance company struggling to stay even.

This news has already made an impact on the campaign trail. Barack Obama has blamed the failed policy of George Bush, and linked John McCain to those policies, whereas McCain says the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Unfortunately, fundamentals won’t get us out of this mess.