• Whether you think stocks are overvalued or not, the last several weeks have been downright ugly on Wall Street. Yesterday, Wall Street lost over 400 points. This morning, stocks opened sharply lower in Europe. Personally, I think we need to expect more volatility and a general downward trend on Wall Street until Washington and Europe decide that austerity is not going to get it done. We need to spend money to get out of this disaster. We need to put people to work.
• Inflation indicators are ticking up. But, with gasoline prices falling, inflation should stand check with the rest of the year.
• Another bank failure, this time in Maryland.
• RE/MAX announced a 12.7% drop in home sales for July.
• It appears that the Justice Department is investigating some of the shenanigans that Standard & Poor's "may have been involved in" in writing those mobile mortgage securities. It appears that there will was some sort of internal debate at Standard & Poor's. Some analysts wanted to downgrade the ratings. This could get interesting.

• Allen West continues to prove that he may be the most delusional Congressman in Washington.
• Of course, while we're thinking about delusional, we would be remiss if we did not add Michelle Bachmann to the list. She believes that Americans fear the rise of the Soviet Union.
• Rick Perry continues to position himself further and further to the right. Yesterday, he mentioned that evolution was a "theory that's out there." He went on to say, "In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution in our schools. Because I figure you're smart enough to figure out which one is right." The stupidity of the statement cannot be underestimated. If you believe that time in the classroom is precious, why would you teach something that you know is wrong? Implicit in Rick Perry's statement is that it is obvious that one of these "theories" is wrong. Why would you waste time teaching students something that you "know" is wrong?
• Bank of America is cutting 3500 jobs.
• Comparing and contrasting Rick Perry and Mitt Romney with regard to their "jobs plan" seems to be a little like sewing eyelashes together. There doesn't seem to be much substance there but the Washington Post tries anyway.
• The president is slowly, very slowly putting together a new jobs plan. Personally, I think we made a major stimulus to the economy. I think the president needs to put together not one or two but five different jobs plans. Each plan should total somewhere around $300 billion. The total package should be around $1.5 trillion. This total package equals approximately 12% of our GDP. The whole economy needs to be overhauled. The government needs to support the economy while it's being overhauled. We need to get rid of the huge backlog of houses. This would stabilize home prices. We need to switch from a credit economy, where everybody spends more than they have based on credit, to a more cash-based economy where we actually have money left over and can save.

What stories are you following today?

Class Warfare. Raising on taxes on the rich is clearly class warfare.