about a minute ago, i thought of the movie crimson tide. when denzel washington and jeanne hackman were on a united states submarine and denzel washington said, god help us if it we re wrong . he said, actually, god help us all if we re wrong. i kind of feel that way right now. if these people were to ever get power, god help us all. stick around. rapid response panel is next. i m kayla tausche with your cnbc market wrap. the dow falling 70 points, the s&p dropping 6 and the nasdaq losing 5. consumer sentiment fell to 77.5, that s the lowest reading in five months, thanks to higher interest rates and slower economic growth. americans, meanwhile, increased their spending in august by .3%, as income grew at its fastest pace in six months. and blackberry is reporting a loss of nearly $1 billion in
definitely closing the gap with the president. in april if you look at team oek obama, outside super pacs, obama had 144 million cash on hand, romg had 77.5. that s a 2-1 spending and that s 2-1 advantage although the fund-raising numbers from april are much, much closer, basically neck and neck. right. we re seeing played out in real time results of the roberts court activist intervention to change the marketplace for campaign finance and to allow the wealthy to give as much they want in an unlimited way. we looked at top 16 don t to romney s super pac, you see they re all very old guys, i think the median age was nearly 70, the median wealth of these guys is over a billion dollars. so you have old billionaires who all have an agenda, both in their own personal businesses and in a broader sense in terms of low tax rates for the wealthy they re pursuing through romney
and unrest in the middle east, any wonder consumer confidence is on a dive? consumer confidence, tumbled this month to 67.5 percent, the lowest since november of 2009, and, after reaching a three year high of 77.5, in february. and, yet, while americans appear to be gloomy about the future, don t feel so bad about the present, apparently and here to explain all of this is brenda buttner, senior business correspondent for the fox news channel and anchor of bulls and bears on the news channel. what do you make of this? we have another statistic that talks about spending, right now. and when it comes to big-ticket items in terms of spending consumers are willing to do that and say it is a good time to buy, 62%, so there is a discrepancy there? well, i think what you are getting is incredibly pessimistic view on the future. which is quite dire for the economy, actually.
77.5. this is what economists had expected, not to be so high, but they had expected it to go back up. the big concern, let s talk about oil and oil prices. here we are in february talking about this. normally, we would be doing a segment like this probably prior to summer season. exactly, in may. yeah. and here we have the price of oil passing $100 a barrel last week in the u.s. national average gas price now $3.35 a gallon. but as we focus a lot on libya and what s going on in the middle east and the unrest, can it all be attributed to that? not necessarily. i mean, yes, there is a lot of the price of oil does not like instability in the middle east, and we ve obviously seen a reflection of that. and while there is an expectation that the barrels are going to go up to $112, i think that, you know, jeffrey lacker was on cnbc on friday talking about how this is really not going to affect the economy. he doesn t expect this to completely derail the growth that the economy has ha
but it s still well below a reading indicating a stable economy. stocks plunged today. the dow lost 178.5. the s&p 500 gave back 27.5. the nasdaq dropped 77.5. most of the democratic members of the indiana general assembly left their desks today in protest of right to work legislation in that state. correspondent steve brown is live in indianapolis to tell us what happened. good evening, steve. hey, bret. the indiana house democrats are believed to have fled the state are either reportedly in illinois or kentucky. they are also believed to be a number of house dems also still in the hoosier state, but laying low. either way, they have so far successfully forced house bill 1468. or the so-called right to work bill in this state. the proposed legislation would make it a crime for anyone in indiana to become member of the union or pay union dues. only three indiana house democrats showed up this morning, denying the house