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About 45% of Americans hold stocks according to recent polling. 57% have a retirement fund but not all retirement funds are invested in the stock market.
Not good for McCain since the Dow Jones, despite today's rally, has fallen by about 25% since last October's peak.
The NumbersAs to recent data: In a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll completed Oct. 5, 49 percent of Americans said they were being personally affected by the Wall Street and mortgage crisis; considerably fewer, 20 percent, said they were being affected “a great deal.”
Broader concern nonetheless clearly is high. In an ABC/Post poll Sept. 22, with the financial crises well underway but not yet at its fever pitch, 79 percent Americans were worried about the economy’s future, 72 percent about the performance of the stock market and 60 percent about their own family’s finances. Again, fewer in each case were “very” worried, 40, 33 and 22 percent, respectively. One obvious question is whether the ongoing crisis has heightened those high-level worries.
Our ongoing ABC News consumer confidence index remained very low this week, -43 on its scale of +100 to -100 last week. It’s been stable, but part of that stability may stem from the fact that it’s computed on a four-week rolling average. We’ll see what happens when a fresh week rolls in next week. At the same time, likely for the same reasons cited above, the index has not responded dramatically to past stock market declines. (And one strongly negative factor on consumer views, gasoline prices, in fact have eased.)
The real economy is hurting too.
There's bad news on the employment front.
Unemployment is up and there's been a huge rise in the numbers of people forced to work part-time because they can't get full-time work: 6.1 million in the 12 months to the end of August.
GM and Chrysler are holding merger talks. If the merger goes ahead it will lead to thousands of layoffs, adding to the over 100,000 jobs lost in the US auto-industry in the last year.
No wonder McCain's given up on Michigan.
US demand for oil in the period January to July 2008 fell at the fastest rate since 1980.
Demand for expensive consumer goods fell by over 5% in August. Even more worringly, demand for non-defence capital goods fell by 7.5% in August.
All these statistics show that the real economy is slowing down dramatically as the US heads for recession.
None of this bodes well for McCain.
If the media focus on the Wall Street and banking crisis shifts to reporting signs of increasing unemployment and recession then he'll be in even more trouble.
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Originally Posted by myksav
