Please help us, they're falling

The BBC reports that the Dow Jones average fell more than 4 percent Wednesday in the wake of the US Federal Reserve's loan to giant insurer American International Group the previous evening. Apparently, investors lack confidence that the aid will solve the underlying economic problems.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan put another 1.5 trillion yen into money markets. Tokyo's Nikkei had dropped 3.1 percent, and the South Korean stock market dropped 3 percent in trading early Thursday morning. The Hong Kong Market had dropped 4 percent.

Many Japanese companies have assets insured by AIG, and they also lack confidence that the Fed's $85 billion loan to AIG will solve its problems.

Trading on the Russian stock exchange was suspended on Wednesday because of a steep drop in stock prices.

Over on AlterNet, Nomi Prins argues that the continuing stock market collapse demonstrates the need to re-regulate runaway financial institutions. (It's a great article, and well worth reading.) On truthdig, Amy Goodman points out why such re-regulation might prove difficult to accomplish:

The meltdown is a bipartisan affair. Presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama each have received millions of dollars from these very companies that are collapsing and are receiving the corporate welfare. President Clinton and his treasury secretary, Robert Rubin (now an Obama economic adviser), presided over the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed after the 1929 start of the Great Depression to curb speculation that caused that calamity. The repeal was pushed through by former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, one of McCain’s former top advisers. Politicians are too dependent on Wall Street to do anything. The people who vote for them, and whose taxes are being handed over to these failed financiers, need to show their outrage and demand that their leaders truly put “country first” and bring about “change.”