Three Up; Three Down

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: October 10, 2008

THREE UP

The leaves have yet to turn, but an annual rite of autumn has arrived: The Virginia Fall Foliage Festival kicks off today in downtown Waynesboro. The event draws people by the thousands, and this year will include a wine festival to be staged by Waynesboro Downtown Development Inc. A juried art show is the event’s centerpiece. Come on downtown and enjoy the fun.
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Somebody neglected to tell Apple, the computer company founded by Steve Jobs, that a recession looms. The California computer maker is expected to introduce a new laptop next week on the heels of second-quarter annual revenue gains of 43 percent, almost two-thirds coming from Notebook biz.
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Candor is hardly heroic, but given its rarity inside the Beltway, give Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn some credit for the kind of straight talk some people only talk about. Whom to blame for the collapse of the economy and housing’s collapse? Everybody. “The root of the problem is political greed,” he said. “… [F]rom both parties.”

THREE DOWN

Five of the 11 largest single-day point drops in Dow history have been recorded since Sept. 15. None of those rivaled the percentage losses of the crashes of 1929 or 1987. But the cumulative losses are discomfiting: Since peaking at more than 14,000 points last year, the Dow has plummeted by almost half, the carnage unabated by the federal bailout package, which so far has drawn only scoffs from an angry bear.
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Well, there he goes again. Fumbling Republican presidential candidate John McCain raised the specter of Bill Ayers over Barack Obama, but persisted in his own socialism in the form of a plan to nationalize mortgages. While the senator reaches across the aisle, America reaches for the door.
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A grim-faced Tim Kaine confronted this week a reality graver than previously imagined: A gaping, $2.5-billion hole in the state budget. The governor somehow is surprised by the fact that revenues shrunk when he anticipated robust growth. Apparently, news of a floundering economy failed to reach him on the Obama campaign trail. Oops.