Fresh statistics reveal an economy that is in grim shape -- and just in time for the election. Jobless claims are higher than they have been since September 2001 and factory orders plunged 4%. If we elect the McCain whose chief economic advisor thinks we're whiners, we can keep this streak going for another four years.

The economic statistics are grim. Initial jobless claims were higher than they've been in seven years. They increased 1,000 to 497,000 last week thanks in part to Gulf Coast hurricanes and staff cuts due to low demand. Meanwhile, the 4% decline in factory orders was worse than anticipated. Economists had forecast a 3% drop after a previously reported 1.3% increase in July. Why so bad? With banks reluctant to lend, companies can't get the funds they need to buy that factory equipment.

Could we be getting whitewashed economic statistics? If GDP growth is reported as positive for the recently departed third quarter, I will be surprised. If you like the effects of deregulation and tax cuts on our economy, there is ample opportunity to keep those policies firmly in place for four more years. With the S&P 500 down 22% so far this year, I am not sure who can afford to vote that way.

But congratulations are in order for their ability to prosper under such difficult economic conditions.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

If there's one great advantage to the failed $700 billion bailout bill, it is this: America has just been given one undeniable opportunity to see which side of the fence the bear squats on. In other words, we can now see exactly who is serving whom.

A majority of Republicans voted against the bailout bill. A majority of Democrats voted for it. So, who's kidding who? Who is serving their constituents? By all accounts that I've heard and read, Republican representatives are saying that they voted the bill down because their constituents were split on the matter 50/50. Fifty percent said no, the other fifty percent said hell no! Yes, we know this could hurt us a bit, but delaying the inevitable would hurt worse.

Your best investment today, in my humble opinion, is to go to Congress.org to review exactly how your personal representatives in government voted on the $700 billion bailout package. Then, armed with the facts, support the candidates who took your position on the most important piece of fiscal legislation brought to the floor in our lifetimes.

Pardon me Washington, but your slip is showing . . .

If the government is finally willing to admit that we are in some deep crap and Warren Buffett is willing to make the call to arms himself, a non-Bush supporter, then the members of Congress that can't find some satisfactory compromise on the $700 billion appropriation are screwing up!

I don't care if the number is a trillion dollars at this point. The money is not a give-away if it is a loan. It may be a bailout, but it is also a backstop against further erosion of our economy.

If the value of equity in the United States, all real estate, stocks, bonds, gold, you name it is worth 100 trillion dollars (wild guess) than how much do we lose if it goes down in value like it is doing now as I type. See Flash: House rejects bailout package, market dives

Every man, woman and child in the country will lose if confidence and liquidity are not propped up. How many jobs will be lost?

Think about this, if the downward spiral is not curtailed than the amount of taxes NOT collected by the Federal Government in the next year or two will be larger than the amount of the backstop the fed is trying to create now! That alone makes the deal worth doing.

Update: The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 7% of its value today. That is in just one day! How many billions of equity is that? How much did you house go down in value today? How much less secure do you feel in your job today?

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.

Let's be polite. It looks like John "Straight Talk Express" McCain may have misspoken when he said that his campaign manager did not receive money from Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE). McCain said in a CNBC interview on September 21 that his campaign manager, Rick Davis, "has had nothing to do with [Freddie and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM)] since [2005], and I'll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it," according to the New York Times. He was either kidding, having a senior moment, or worse. It turns out that Freddie paid Davis "$15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through [August 2008]," according to the Times.

Although Davis did not do much for the money -- besides retain his ties to McCain -- his firm, David Manafort, got $500,000 from Freddie and $2 million between 2000 and 2005 as president of "the Homeownership Alliance, which [Freddie and Fannie] created to help them oppose new regulations," according to the Times. It's too bad because more regulation might have prevented the need to spend $200 billion worth of our money to bail out Fannie and Freddie bondholders like PIMCO's Bill Gross and China's People's Bank.

Sure, McCain has been trying to change the subject -- by creating, what I consider to be, false advertisements that accuse a former Fannie CEO of advising Obama. (This former CEO and the Obama campaign both deny the ad's claim, according to the Times). And while McCain's "verbal missteps" may disturb some, his pattern of working closely with those who deregulated the financial services industry links him to what put our economy in the tank. After all, his chief economic advisor, Phil "Americans are Whiners" Gramm, deregulated the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market that helped bring down Lehman Brothers and American International Group (NYSE: AIG).

In less than two months, the U.S. is scheduled to hold an election. As the current 100 Year Crash unfolds, it is clear that old ways of thinking will not fix the problem. This challenge is enormous: history will not provide much of a guide and it is likely that the entire global financial system will need to be rebuilt from scratch. In short, whoever gets the job will face a challenge that would be overwhelming for anyone -- and it will require a leader with brains, energy and determination.

That's what scares me about John McCain's interview on NBC's Today Show Wednesday. Dealbreaker reports that Matt Lauer asked McCain whether he would let American International Group (NYSE: AIG) fail "on their own" without government help. To that, McCain replied,

Well...quote, "on their own"...we have to - we cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else...this is something we're gonna have to work through -- there's too much corruption, there's too much access, we can fix it, I believe in America - we can have a 9/11 commission such as we had after 9/11, 'cause this is a huge crisis and we can come up with fixes and we can make sure that every American has a safer future and that is to make them know that their bank deposits are safe and insured."

One of the many cliches about the stock market is that it's never wrong. Today's triple-digit rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average shows that markets can be depressed, manic or just pain stupid, sometimes all at the same time.

The depressed part comes from the housing market. Thinking about Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM), which today slashed its dividend and posted awful results, and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), which posted terrible results and ignored signs that things were going sour, would have been enough to drive the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale of the "Power of Positive Thinking" fame to drink.

There is no sign that the market has hit bottom. Garage sales are mushrooming in my suburban community as people sell their personal possessions to raise cash. It's really sad.

Mania set in today as investors start to wonder whether lowering commodity prices will give the economy a jolt. Remember that no car or truck was designed with oil over $100 a barrel in mind. The fact that oil is only slightly less insanely high should give no solace to anyone. Fuel got so expensive that people started driving less and began snapping up pint-size Smart Cars, which look to me as safe as a Matchbox car. This is a sign that things are bad -- not that they will improve. Mind you, the smallest wiff of political instability and oil prices will start climbing yet again.

People seem to think that the economy is going to get better through some magic elixir of a second economic stimulus package and drilling for oil. Those ideas are not only stupid, they are dangerous. Unfortunately, quick fixes are not the answer. We have to let the market sort things out. About the best the government can do is figure out a way to cushion the blow.

Oil got off to a strong start today, with prices at one point moving up as high as $130.69 a barrel as fears of supply disruptions in Iran have kept the market bullish for the time being.

Prices cool off a bit and are now sitting at $129.40, but you can be sure that as long as the tension between the West and Iran persists, you are going to continue to see prices that just refuse to come back down towards any sort of comfortable level.

Last week, we saw a pretty sizable drop in oil prices (see chart at the end of this post), which could be the main reason why this morning's rally was not able to hold above the $130 mark. Investors are probably still a bit weary of betting that we have hit support yet. What really got the market moving early on was fresh threats from the U.S. that more sanctions would be imposed on oil-rich Iran should it not cease its current nuclear program.

For the first time Monday I heard John McCain comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. I had heard this before in other arenas, but not from McCain. I guess that despite these two presidential candidates pledging to the American people to bring change and resist politics as usual, they are both, as usual as one could get.

Obama is being shaped by the pressures of running for office and to believe otherwise is delusional. I suppose one has to have hope but the effects of the campaign are becoming clear. Obama has been painting McCain as an extension of Bush, which is nonsense, and now in a typical tit-for-tat response, McCain is filling the air with Carter references.

Both McCain and Obama are wrong in their assessments of their opponents and they are becoming commoners to resort to the bottom of the barrel campaign techniques used in every campaign for most of our nation's proud history. Obama gave up the high ground too easily and McCain has decided he can sling mud with the best of them.

Larry Kudlow, a right-wing market commentator on CNBC and WABC radio, has been trying to sell the idea that the market doesn't like presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and will surely tank if he's elected.

Kudlow claims: "Markets don't like Obama. If he wins alongside Democratic gains in the House and Senate, taxes are going up big time. [...] Interestingly, stocks have preferred Hillary in the Democratic fight...because markets believe they can do business with Hillary in a way they can't with Obama."

His proof? The day after West Virgina the Dow was up 66 points. But didn't everyone already know she would take West Virginia (if not by such a huge margin? Don't traders still buy on the rumor, sell on the news anymore? Do traders only belong to that dwindling club of Clinton partisans who believe West Virginia was another turn-around?

Like, his paymasters, the oil companies -- who contributed $2.7 million to his 2004 campaign -- George W. Bush is feeling sorry for himself. Perhaps his record low poll ratings are hurting his feelings. He went to Saudi Arabia and asked it to increase production. He went to the Middle East and asked them to make peace -- it's a nice sentiment but will results follow? But that's not why Bush is whining.

BusinessWeek reports that Bush's complaint is that he thinks General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) NBC News was unfair in the way it edited an interview. In the Israeli parliament, Bush gave a speech which none-too subtly implied that Barack Obama was like Nazi appeaser, Neville Chamberlain, because Obama has said he would meet with Iranian leaders. Bush thought he was being clever in his non-denial denial. Now he is complaining that NBC is being "deceitful."

That's rich coming from the person who got the U.S. into a war with Iraq based on false claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and ties to Al Qaeda. Is it the "Mission Accomplished" Bush or the "Heck-of-a-job-Brownie" Bush who's complaining about NBC News's "deceit?" Meanwhile -- as I posted here, here and here -- the oil companies have been whining because their earnings are down -- the price of oil has doubled and they have only been able to increase wholesale prices by 39%. Boo hoo!

So as you stand at the pump filling up your tank with $4 a gallon -- a surprise to Bush -- shed a tear for Bush and those poor, suffering oil companies.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns GE shares.

As Joseph Lazzaro wrote earlier today, oil prices were surging once again in today's market, and traders set a new record, pushing prices up as high as $114.08 today.

Fueling today's rally were concerns over global supply, as news spread that Russian oil production has fallen this year. This is the first time in a decade that Russia is seeing a decline in its production.

Russia is not the only country making headlines. We were also given the news that China had a massive jump in its diesel oil imports last month of a remarkable 49%. So, we are being given both the news that Russia is producing less, while China is demanding more; the perfect recipe for a strong day for oil prices. Other oil producers, Mexico and Nigeria, announced that they had temporarily shut down some of their production as well.

While Congressional Democrats and candidates for the presidency have spoken out in favor of more extensive help for distressed homeowners, the leaders of the Republican Party, including John McCain, have been more reluctant to support a bailout of people who bought houses they couldn't afford.

This is putting congressmen representing those areas hardest hit by foreclosures in a bind, as their constituents plead for help. What are they supposed to do?

This may be a case of a silent majority of people who oppose a bailout but aren't making much noise. People who are desperate to hang onto their houses tend to be louder than regular joes who just don't want their tax money being used for bailouts of irresponsible people -- Who wants to be seen as a judgmental curmudgeon?

I worry that politicians will compound the housing industry's problems because of political pressure, making doing the rational thing -- which may very well be nothing -- basically impossible.

When John McCain, in a rare moment of coherence got it right, the backlash was immediate, with an enthusiastic mob comparing him to Herbert Hoover.

The best bet for Republicans here is probably to stick to their guns on the no-bailout platform, and hope that the silent majority will get behind them.

Over the past ten years, eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY)'s CEO, Meg Whitman, has had a love / hate relationship with eBay users. No matter what your personal thoughts are regarding Whitman, you have to give it to her; she did take eBay to levels no one would have dreamed possible just ten years ago.

Well, her tenure at eBay is coming to an end, and her next move is into politics, working high up in Senator John McCain's Presidential campaign.

Back in January, Whitman announced that she would be stepping down from eBay to pursue philanthropy and politics, and her first big step is going to be serving as co-chair of Senator McCain's national presidential campaign.

While we still have not reached the point of McCain being announced the official Republican candidate for the upcoming election, it is all but a forgone conclusion that McCain is going to be the Republican's choice for November's pivotal election in America. After a rocky eight years with George Bush running the show, the Republicans are definitely going to have their hands full with this year's election, and Whitman is coming on board to have a leading role in the campaign's financing and policy development.

Talking about raising taxes is a tough way to attract votes, no matter what party you're in. But given our federal budget nightmare, conservative Republican Ben Stein is saying that taxes do need to be raised. And remember, this is a guy who wrote speeches for Richard Nixon.

In a column in the Sunday New York Times, Stein delivers a pointed rebuttal to the Laffer-curve inspired voodoo economics that have controlled the Republican Party for decades: the notion that cutting taxes increases economic productivity to the point where tax cuts pay for themselves. If you don't believe me that this hasn't worked, check out the national debt clock.

In a column directed at Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, Stein writes that "The first step toward putting our house in order, once we are past the seemingly looming recession, is much higher taxes on the truly rich and serious enforcement to prevent offshore tax evasion."

Ben Stein is right -- as he usually is. The notion that we should continue sending more than $1 billion a day to pay interest on the federal debt to avoid raising Warren Buffett's tax rate by a few points is nuts.

But here's the political problem: people are optimistic and a lot of people think that they will one day be in that upper tax bracket -- kind of like how 90% of people think they're above average drivers and take risks accordingly. We may be mortgaging our future out of concern that we'll have to pay slightly higher taxes when we are rich.

Pushing aside many other newsworthy stories today is one more very sad tale about a do-gooder gone bad. Today it was learned that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (and former Attorney General) has displayed the ultimate in hypocrisy that will leave a stench so thick it will tarnish not just his reputation, but that of every public official. An already cynical public can only become even more cynical now.

It is being reported that Governor Spitzer engaged the services of a New York prostitution ring in advance of a trip to Washington DC. I will not get on my own moralist high horse about the subject of prostitution, although, I could probably understand the arguments in favor of it being legalized. However, this is much greater than that. This is a question of hypocrisy, illegal activity, betraying a public trust, lying, cheating and stealing.

If the facts play out as initially reported, then he has betrayed his family, friends, business associates and the public. This made all the worse by his self-aggrandizing and many would argue overzealous approach to chasing Wall Street executives up a tree and then leveraging the chase to build a platform for his now shamed office of Governor.

If Mr. Spitzer were single and a private citizen, we could debate a whole range of other issues. But given his history, and moralizing and de-moralizing others -- to state the obvious -- this stinks to the high heavens.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.