The Down is down 315 points so far today, and oil is down to $94.78/bbl (that's oil futures).
Apparently the jobless data is causing some panic, as traders realize there may be a recession in the offing (whoa, Nelly, who'd a thought we might have a business downturn?? -- or anyway that seems to be the reaction here). Seems to be more talk from the Fed about lowering interest rates again. Wonder if they'll hit zero, the way they did in Japan? There's an old term for that: the "liquidity trap". The analogy to what happens then is that they're trying to control something by "pushing on a string". I seem to recall the "liquidity trap" was merely a theoretical curiosity, suspected of being impossible and hence of no special import in the real world, until it actually happened in Japan.
