All hail the credit rating agencies. The Dow is tanking, at the time of this post down over 630 points, probably getting hit with margin calls. Gold is over $1700 an ounce. Oil is down $3 dollars a barrel as investors hunt for a place to hide. Currency exchange rates are bouncing. Panic is clear due to high market volumes and the fear index, otherwise known as the VIX, surged 40% in a day.

Wall Street exits, stage right, from the United States economy. The Dow closed 513 points down today and is down over 1,200 points since July 21. Both the Nasdaq and the S&P. This is the worst one day drop since October 2008, otherwise known as the great financial Armageddon.

Only three of the 500 stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 index had gains. Oil fell by 6 percent. The yield on the two-year Treasury note hit a record low as investors sought out relatively stable investments.

All three major stock indexes are down 10 percent or more from their previous highs, a drop-off that is considered to be a market correction. A drop of 20 percent or more signifies the start of a bear market, an extended period of stock declines.

Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop. This week the fur is flying over the never ending economic absurdity spewing from our government representatives.

Did the GOP Play Math Hooky?

Scarecrow calls it on how the press doesn't even challenge outrageous economic fiction being spewed by politicians in did the GOP miss third grade math?

Compared to laying siege to government, hurting millions, and putting the economy at risk, it’s only a minor irritant, I suppose, one of the dozens of little misrepresentations that we are so used to hearing from the right wing that we just shrug our shoulders and wait for something new. But the fact the media almost never pushes back suggests that letting it slide is a mistake. And it’s just fractions!

Remember third grade math? Sure you do. It’s when you probably first learned fractions. Numerators! Denominators? Percentages! Pies! Well, it seems many right wingers skipped that year, because they can’t recall that a fraction has both a numerator and a denominator, so the size of the fraction depends on both.

So night after night, apparent third grade dropouts tell news anchors and talk show hosts, none of whom even sighs (sigh), that government spending has exploded under Socialist Obama. Before Obama, it was about 19 percent of GDP or 1/5th. But now its almost 1/4th, or 24 percent of GDP.

Tom Coburn said that on my public tv. Boehner and McConnell and Kyl say that. Every Tea-GOP and rightwinger has it tatooed on their foreheads, and Sarah Palin has is written on her palm. From 19 to 24 percent! Yikes!

It seems President Obama knows how to crash a party as well as a server. The House of Representatives website is crashed after Obama went on prime time television asking Americans to contact their representatives. In visiting John Boehner's website 15 minutes ago this error message was displayed.

Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)

About sums up the insane budget crisis doesn't it?

When Obama told Americans to contact their representatives to show support for his debt-ceiling plan, the response was so strong it overwhelmed some House telephone lines and websites.

On Tuesday morning, House officials said calls to telephone circuits there are hitting near capacity, with many callers getting busy signals. An alert advised members' offices to provide important contacts with alternative numbers, adding that outbound calls are unaffected.

In addition, Monday night and Tuesday morning checks of the websites of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., showed a "Server is too busy" response on an otherwise blank screen, as did the House Ways and Means Committee website on Tuesday morning.

This author is more horrified at our government in general and believes every representative should be required to pass an economics class before being sworn into office. Kind of like requiring bad driving school for repeat traffic offenders. With that, what are others saying?

The below video interviews Yves Smith pointing to the entire debt ceiling crisis being manufactured.