this morning in this article. I guess they think anyone that owns stock or mutual funds is rich. This news may make those with economic penis envy happy to think that the "evil rich" they hate lost so much money. Perhaps if they realized that these losses mean lower tax revenues to spend on their pet government programs, they wouldn't be so happy. It also has other ripple effects, such as when people who've seen their net worth decline cut back on spending, cutting employment.

Also, those who think the US is the most polluted place on Earth must never have travelled very much. Pollution is very widespread in the "developing nations" where people are more concerned about feeding their families than in the environment. It's also many times worse in the former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states and China where the command economies never cared very much about pollution. Even "enlightened" Europe was late to the mark on environmental cleanup. They didn't put emissions controls on cars or switch to unleaded gas until the 1990s. When I was there (78-80), you couldn't bring a European car built after 1967 back to the States because they didn't meet our emissions requirements.