We have been having a great time with all of the fun news coming out of the Greatest Depression but even we, to paraphrase our patron saint Mary J. Blige, are getting a little tired of the drama. Today in the last hour of trading, for the fourth day in a row since the House passed its rescue package, the Dow took another nosedive, down 680 points. The S&P 500 is hovering around 22 percent, which is extremely worrying to Floyd Norris. General Motors sank 31 percent, and even banks regarded as reasonably solid — JPMorgan and Bank of America, for instance — took a turn for the worse. Worryingly, so did Wells Fargo, no doubt due to its involvement with that floozy Wachovia. Speaking of which, Wells Fargo's talks with Citigroup blew up today — Citi was like "eff this" after the two failed to come to a mutual agreement; meaning that now Wells Fargo will either pay a $60 billion dowry to Citigroup to release Wachovia or — more likely — just walk away, leaving the bank in a loveless marriage to Vikram Pandit. No! We were wrong! They were like, "Go ahead, be with your whore." Happy ending!

Which brings us to even more good news...

In Tuesday's debate, Barack Obama called this recession "the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." True or false? True, according to actual Child of the Depression Jerry Stiller, whom we met at the Project A.L.S. benefit gala at the Waldorf=Astoria the night of the debate. “I came up through the Depression,” he says. “My parents had three kids. My father was an unemployed cab driver. There was no money. No money. I’m talking about real misery at this time. It brought out the worst in families — fights because the money controlled what people thought of themselves. If the father didn’t earn a dollar, the family went to pieces. That I remember being very much a part of my life and I don’t want to see it happen again.”

But Stiller thinks that this one could be worse. “There are more people around,” he says, “and they can point directly to something. When somebody says, 'I signed a mortgage I didn’t understand,' somebody hoodwinked them! We didn’t know what we were hit with in 1932. We were just hit with a blackjack. We didn’t know how, why, where. Now we can point the fingers, you see. Blame will cause more problems. We can’t blame. We have to find one person who’s going to make us stand up and think we can lick this thing and bring us back to normality."

London, 8 p.m.:* Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack descended the staircase of his hotel and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His shoes: shiny. His suit: expensive— but not too expensive. His eyebrows were carefully combed and held in place with their usual coat of clear mascara, and tonight, because the dinner with the Mitsubishi executives was so important, so vital, he also took the precaution of dabbing a small amount of concealer under his eyes to hide the dark circles. Because tonight of all nights, John Mack could not reveal stress. Looking in the mirror he saw, to his relief, that he did not look stressed. The face looking back at him was the same face he had lived with for 63 years, though, he thought ruefully, the man behind it was very different from the brash young bond trader he had once been, the one whose rallying cry was “There’s blood in the water, let’s go kill." Now, it was his blood that was in the water.

We've lately been confounded by Ryan Reynolds. Why is he so popular? We liked Just Friends and everything but how on earth did he get to marry Scarlett Johansson? But today Reynolds wrote an essay on the Huffington Post, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that — unlike many of HuffPo's celebrity contributions — it's actually touching and lovely and hilarious. Apparently, during an interaction with Michael J. Fox, Reynolds found himself offering to compete in the New York marathon on behalf of Parkinson's disease, a disease his father also has. "Which was, well … dumb," he explains, since he is not at all a runner and had not long ago watched the marathon and found it "horrifying."

I saw guys coming in to finish with bleeding nipples. Why in the hell were their nipples bleeding? People were crying. People were limping, hobbling, screaming, crawling. But most importantly, people were experiencing a sublime rapture that I couldn't even hope to understand. They were touching something magical no stalk-still mortal simply watching the race could comprehend. These people had accomplished something real. At that moment, with all the energy, inspiration and passion swirling through the crisp autumnal air, I breathed in deeply and decided something: I'd never fucking do that ever, ever. What in the fuck were these idiots thinking? Bleeding nipples. Bleeding. Nipples.

The North American portion of the NHL schedule begins tonight, and the league will apparently take attention wherever they can get it. So when the Flyers open their season in Philly against the Rangers on Saturday, the ceremonial first puck will be dropped by none other than the country’s most famous hockey mom, Sarah Palin. This sounds like a far worse idea for Palin than for the Flyers, as there aren’t many environments more hostile than Philadelphia sporting venues. The political affiliations of those in attendance really won't much matter, either; these are people who once booed Santa Claus, for goodness sake.

We are completely, semiotically mesmerized by the fact that the 2008 election is coalescing around John McCain's sneeringly off-the-cuff pairing of two words so unremarkable that, even when they stand together, they usually only signify what someone is pointing to. Like you point to the Crispy Buttermilk Shrimp on the Applebee's menu and go, "You want that one?" and your friend points to the Fiesta Lime Chicken and goes, "No, that one." While you're in Missouri or something. So banal, right? But now, in a brilliant, 24-hour inversion, it's a rallying cry: Didn't every one of your friends write some defiant status update on Facebook the minute the debate ended Tuesday night? "Clover is counting the days till that one is our new president!" And now there's an eponymous blog that beatifies That One and lets you buy That One T-shirts. And a That One '08 Facebook fan club. And even an awesomely stupid electro song sung and rapped by a likable moron: "I'm not into dudes, but That One is kind of cool … if I would be into dudes, it might be, like, That One." If a certain Some One earns a victory speech, you so know what the crowd is going to be chanting while they wait.

ThatOne08.com
Earlier: McCain Calls Obama 'That One': Why?

Here’s an interesting little fact coming from Nate Silver: "Between the three debates thus far, the Obama-Biden ticket has used the phrase "middle class" 21 times. McCain-Palin have used it twice." Indeed, it was hard to miss Obama continuously steering his answers back to the middle class in Tuesday’s debate. But while McCain wasn’t actually using the phrase, on Tuesday he did introduce a proposal for homeowners that initially got lost in the post-debate pontificating. McCain’s “American Homeownership Resurgence Plan” would have the Treasury Department buy up bad home-loan mortgages at their original rates and renegotiate the price based on the diminished value of the home. And while that may sound appealing to those homeowners, doubts are being raised in both liberal and conservative corners about the burden the plan places on taxpayers, and the fairness of it all.

Despite the government's implementation of a $700 billion bailout bill and the unprecedented lowering of interest rates, "the world’s markets hardly seemed comforted," the Times observed this morning. Less comforting is the fact that the Treasury does not exactly appear to have a solid Plan B — except maybe nationalizing banks — and that the language they are using regarding the economy has begun increasingly to resemble the rhetoric surrounding the Iraq War. We thought we detected a certain eau de quagmire in Henry Paulson's comments at a press conference yesterday, for example: "Patience is also needed because the turmoil will not end quickly and significant challenges remain ahead," he said. "Neither passage of this new law nor the implementation of these initiatives will bring an immediate end to current difficulties.''

But they told us the credit markets would greet the bailout as a liberator!

Every day (or close to it) until November 4, a series of writers and thinkers will discuss the election over instant messenger for nymag.com. Today, Garrett M. Graff, author of The First Campaign and editor-at-large for the Washingtonian, and New York's Michael Idov discuss dirty campaigning and the Internet, what the future holds for Joe Lieberman and Sarah Palin, and never underestimating the ability of Democrats to screw up winning.

M.I.: My $3,000,000 overhead projector is on. Shall we?

G.G.: I think one of the most interesting stories out today is the New York Times article about how the Democrats may end up scoring major victories in the House and the Senate races across the country — even in some unlikely spots. My question for you, since I know you've covered Mr. Joementum himself: What does a big Democratic victory mean for Joe Lieberman come January 2009?

Yesterday the McCain campaign took their assault on Barack Obama's association with former Weather Underground leader William Ayers even further, issuing a statement from Yonkers City Councilman John Murtagh. "Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family," Murtagh wrote, recounting how in 1970, when he was 9 years old, the Weather Underground allegedly fire-bombed his house (his father at the time was a New York Supreme Court judge presiding over a Black Panther case). Last night, Obama addressed the issue on ABC News with his same boilerplate "This all happened when I was 8" response. From Obama:

"I am surprised that, you know, we've been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days, that he wasn't willing to say it to my face. But I guess we've got one last debate. So presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate."

The thing is, if McCain does bring up William Ayers during the debate next Wednesday, it'll have been a week and a half of them hammering the same shaky point. And that's still twenty days until the election.

Amid the otherwise sobering economic news, into this dark hour of our national life comes a ray of sun that gives us the courage to go on believing that this is, indeed, the Greatest Depression: Julian Schnabel has cut the price on the triplex in his pink and glorious Palazzo Chupi compound in the West Village by $5.5 million, bringing the asking price to a relatively modest $24 million (it was originally listed at $32 million, before he lowered it in July). Our hearts soared when we read the news in this morning's Post; if things keep going at this rate, we may one day be able to afford it! Or, at the very least, we may one day end up charging the wooden gates and squatting among the imported emerald tiles as the Revolution rages outside. Either way.

CHUPI PINK $LIP [NYP]