I just received an email from Team Obama with the subject, “Black Monday.” This stood out:

greg — Hard-working American families are anxiously trying to make sense of yesterday’s disastrous economic headlines. While they’re trying to figure out just how hard the news will hit them and their savings, John McCain’s advice seems to be: don’t worry about it. Right after a major global investment bank declared bankruptcy, and in the middle of the second-biggest Dow Jones drop this century, McCain told an audience in Florida that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

This is not true. Here are the facts:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday fell 504.48, or 4.42 percent, to 10,917.5, in the worst point drop since the first day of trading after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.It was also the sixth-largest point drop in the Dow, just behind the 508.00 it suffered in the October 1987 crash.
In percentage terms, Monday’s drop was the steepest since July 19, 2002, but it pales in comparison with some of the biggest one-day falls:
Oct. 19, 1987The 508-point drop on what became known as Black Monday represented a 22.6 percent decline. (Technically, a 24.4 percent loss on Dec. 12, 1914, was larger, but that occurred on the first trading day as financial markets reopened after a four-month closure at the beginning of World War I.)
Sept. 17, 2001The Dow lost 684.81 following the 9/11 attacks, a loss of just over 7 percent.
Oct. 28 and Oct. 29, 1929The two days that kicked off the Stock Market Crash of 1929 saw the Dow drop 12.8 percent and 11.7 percent, respectively.
April 14, 2000The Dow shed 618 points, or 5.7 percent, as the tech-stocks bubble burst and inflation fears rose. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell almost 10 percent.

Could they have meant “decade?” Either way, the fundamentals of the economy are strong (don’t take my word for it, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg said it) and for Obama to spread misinformation and panic, albeit unintentionally, only makes the problem worse. Senator Obama needs to send out a correction immediately.