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THE MARKET….Stocks are down today:

Worries about the corporate sector sent stocks on Wall Street lower again on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones industrials dropping more than 400 points before recovering slightly.

….The problems have appeared in a range of industries. The aviation giant Boeing saw profits fall 38 percent last quarter. Merck, the pharmaceutical company, posted a 28 percent drop in net income and will cut jobs. The North Carolina-based bank Wachovia, which was recently acquired by Wells Fargo, suffered a $23.7 billion net loss.

Stocks have been swinging around pretty wildly over the past few weeks as investors have responded to the drama of the credit crisis, but it’s worth keeping in mind that over the long term this is what really matters. If earnings reports stayed strong regardless of credit market problems, then the market would do fine. But that’s extremely unlikely to be the case. We’ve got at least a year of weak corporate earnings ahead of us, and that almost certainly means we’ve also got at least a year of declining stock prices ahead of us too. Main Street’s suffering is just starting.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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