Yeah, I know, I don’t normally do the stock market indices, but the Dow fell to below 7000 today, and closed at 6,763.29, a 12 year low, and you can be sure that this spooks both the markets, and the regulators.

More significant is the fact that personal savings in the US are way up, and as the graph from Calculated Risk shows.

It’s been over a decade since personal savings were that high, and while generally this would be a good thing^™, right now the fact that people are deleveraging means that the economy is driven even further down.

It makes sense personally, but in the aggregate, it makes things worse.

Interestingly enough, even with the increase in savings, consumer spending rose in January by 0.6%, which was unexpected, as did incomes, bu 0.4%, which was also a surprise.

I think that it is a one month thing, though it might be the “Obama Effect,” making people more willing to spend now that a Bush and His Evil Minions^™ are no longer running things, but in either case the effect is small, and unless we see increases for the next few months, things won’t get better.

We also saw the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index rise to 35.8 from 35.6, beating expectations of a fall to 33.8, but note that this means merely that it’s contracting slightly less implosively than it would otherwise: any number below 50 is a contraction, and this makes 13 straight months of contraction.

The full link to the ISM monthly report is here, and it should be noted that their employment index is at all time (since 1947) low.

In real estate, construction dropped to a 4½ year low.

Meanwhile, the AIG bailout, and the concerns that it raises has driven oil down on concerns of more turmoil in the banking system, and has driven the dollar up in a flight to safety.