Apocalypse Now

In more-or-less chronological order, here's a list of some of the ridiculous and troubling events that happened last week...

1. Fannie May and Freddie Mac are bailed out by the Federal government. $500 billion dollars to take control of these quasi-governmental institutions, ruined in the "mortgage crisis." As an astute poster on digg.com mentions, why is it that there's no money for universal healthcare, yet the government can scrape together half a trillion dollars in no time flat to bail out financial institutions?
2. United Airline's stock dropped from nearly $12.50 a share to $3 a share... for no good reason. Here's what happened: Google News' software found an old article in the Chicago Tribune about a 2002 United bankruptcy-court filing. As the old article wasn't properly dated, it was posted by Google News as though it were new news. Software used by stock traders to automatically buy and sell stock found the article and started to sell. And sell. And sell. This automated sell-off, combined with the Tribune article and pre-existing fears about the weakness of United's stock amid ongoing trouble in the airline industry caused the rumor to spread like wildfire. When the dust cleared later in the day, trading of United stock had been frozen at $3. The price went back up to $10.60 a share, but the damage had been done. $1.14 billion had been lost -- gone, evaporated, *poof*.
3. McCain caught Obama in the polls. Sure, the RNC provided a bump, but the larger cause for the bump is most troubling. All Palin, all the time. She has minimal experience, her primary interaction with the public was a well-delivered speech written before her nomination, and until a Thursday interview with ABC, she refused to answer questions (for good reason; the VP should probably know what the Bush Doctrine is, at least well enough to BS an answer). Yet because she's a pretty woman selling herself as a religious frontier-mom, she's polling through the roof. McCain v. Obama? The actual contest? Who cares. In the popularity contest that is the Presidential election for much of America, Palin's revisiting her role as Prom Queen. Issues and experience be damned.
4. David Foster Wallace hanged himself at home in Claremont, CA. I've read some of his essays, and had just started his masterwork, Infinite Jest. Only twenty pages in, I was already wondering how anyone could walk through life with such thoughts rattling around in one's head. It seems that over time, not even he could handle it. The greatest young author of the last hundred years is gone, dead at 46. Some who knew him offer tribute.
5. A freight train and passenger train collide, head-on in California. At least 23 dead. Possible cause of the accident? One of the engineers may have been texting with teens interested in the railroad, as an education/public service task, just before the accident -- the worst of its kind in the region.
6. Syria invades Lebanon. (Sadly, I'm guessing you may have heard about it here first.)
7. Hurricane Ike pummels the Texas coast.
8. The financial sector continues its slide to the bottom. Can the banks fall further? Apparently yes. "Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself on Sunday to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer. . . . But even as the fates of Lehman and Merrill hung in the balance, another crisis loomed as the insurance giant American International Group appeared to teeter. Staggered by losses stemming from the credit crisis, A.I.G. sought a $40 billion lifeline from the Federal Reserve, without which the company may have only days to survive." Alan Greenspan, the former Fed Chief who could have done a lot to minimize this problem by raising interest rates a touch while he was still in office, now says that the economy is in a "once-in-a-lifetime" crisis. For a better understanding of what's going on and how we got here, Paul Krugman provides insight.
9. To end on a positive note, Tina Fey and Amy Pohler did a great job leading off this year's SNL season opener.

[Photo via Waxin' and Milkin']