Bear Market: The Number One Threat To America

The traditional definition of a bear market is a 20% market decline. It’s hard to peg an official bear market because maybe one index drops that much but the others don’t. Or maybe things rebound quickly after a drop. But as of today it seems to be real: Since their peaks in October 2007, the Dow was down 20%, NASDAQ was down 21%, and the S&P 500 was down 19%. And with the June jobs report and an expected ECB rate hike both tomorrow, it looks like this is a bear market that may stick.

The Colbert Report writers are surely hard at work capitalizing on the bear analogies, but let us be the first to steal the bear-hating Colbert-ism for this application and say that The Bear Market Is The Number One Threat To America. And if Barry — pictured in this grainy TBP bear market surveillance photo — has his way, the markets will keep dropping.