Remember when the DOW dropped 500 points last Thursday? Remember when “people” were saying “Hey, there, kid! It’s a tremendous buying opportunity! Oversold!! Buy the dip!!”

Well, I really hope you didn’t listen. Because falling knives are really sharp. Since the United States got downgraded Friday by S&P from AAA to AA+, things have taken a turn for the worse. The DOW closed down 634 points today, a 5.5% decline. If you think that’s bad, the Nasdaq suffered a 6.9% drop and the S&P 500 was down 6.66%. That’s three sixes, which obviously means Satan is involved.

Or maybe it’s not Satan but that damn S&P that just has it in for us, or maybe it’s our political system, as Obama told us early this afternoon. The president said “No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a AAA country.”

And after that short speech, the markets dropped further.

As Zero Hedge stated, this was the 6th largest drop in Dow Jones history. That’s awesome that records are being made!

And we hope you really stayed away from Bank of America, which dropped 20% today. But maybe Cramer still likes it. Buy the dip!

Off the road. On the booze.

Some more funny items I saw today:

• The Onion: Drunken Ben Bernanke tells everyone at bar how screwed economy really is…
• Michael Moore wants Obama to arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors!
• The president quoted Warren Buffett as saying the United States is a “AAAA” country. The S&P, of course, marked the outlook for Berkshire Hathaway from stable to “negative.”
• Tim Geithner says that the S&P has “shown a stunning lack of knowledge about basic US fiscal budget math.” LOL.
• BofA says they don’t need to raise capital. (Right.) On a related note, I have heard rumors that people are raiding ATMs to get their money out of BofA as fast as possible. Can anybody confirm?
• Final LOL: Cramer still has a job.

-Bill

Having plowed his way through CNBC (rumor has it Larry Kudlow was the lone holdout, the prude), human sex machine Charlie Gasparino is leaving the hallowed halls of that network to take the many cherries at rival Fox Business Network.

The well-known and volatile Mr. Gasparino, who played a pivotal role in CNBC’s coverage of the financial crisis in 2008, will be a senior correspondent for Fox Business, appearing on a range of programs, the network said in a statement.

Translation: we didn’t want to bump Don Imus, so he doesn’t get his own show.

In the competitive world of TV business news, Mr. Gasparino is one of a handful of on-camera correspondents who regularly break market news.

Translation: everyone left at CNBC is completely worthless.

Good luck, Chaz. We’ll see you again when you’re on a network people actually watch.

It’s become something of a custom for CNBC personalities to be silly and/or ignorant, but it’s generally on matters related directly to monetary policy or the markets (except for the Fast Money crew, those guys are cool). It’s rare that any of the CNBC peeps get to flaunt their half-witted chops outside the confines of the network’s rather limited subject matter, but when they do, it’s gold. Such as today, when everyone’s favorite Money Honey displayed a kind of shocking lack of comprehension of what Medicare even is. Pardon the bias, HuffPo never claimed to be objective.

At one point, Bartiromo was critical of the government-managed health care system in the United Kingdom. “How do I know the quality [of health care in the United States] is not going to suffer” with a public option? she asked.

Rep. Weiner reminded her that there already is government-managed health care in the United States — namely, Medicare, the system created for Americans 65 years and older — and that patients with Medicare report very high satisfaction rates.

Bartiromo’s response to this argument was a true head-scratcher. In a mocking tone, she pressed the congressman: “How come you don’t use it [Medicare]? You don’t have it. How come you don’t have it?”

Rep. Weiner, who turns 45 this week, tried to walk Bartiromo through it. “Because I’m not 65.” But she was insistent. “Yeah… c’mon!” she exclaimed, laughing incredulously.

Now, it’s sort of on purpose that we haven’t touched the whole healthcare reform thing with a twenty-foot pole here, despite the effect it’s going to have on the economy either way and despite the near-endless lulz potential it offers from every angle. But I can’t pass up a CNBC anchor being an actual retard, even when it is someone other than Jim Cramer, who really needs to step up his efforts. Maria really brought her A-game here.

Just keep this in mind the next time you hear her saying what anyone should do with their money.

“Although large in its own right, TARP is only a part of the combined efforts of the federal government to address the financial crisis,” Barofsky writes in his latest quarterly report to Congress. “Approximately 50 initiatives or programs have been created by various federal agencies since 2007 to provide potential support totaling more than $23.7 trillion.”

The current balance of support provided is about $3 trillion, Barofsky says. About half of that is Federal Reserve lending; the rest includes TARP, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. assistance and other programs.

To get to the $23.7 trillion of “total potential support,” Barofsky calculates that the government’s programs would have to balloon to these amounts: Fed lending, $6.8 trillion; TARP, $3 trillion; FDIC, $2.3 trillion; non-TARP Treasury aid, $4.4 trillion; and various mortgage-aid programs, $7.2 trillion.

His worst-case is, honestly, worst-case. It’s complete bankfail, every Fannie/Freddie mortgage going bad, it’s Treasury itself defaulting. But, that’s what the definition of worst-case is.

Squawk Box, however, seemed pretty unamused by the idea. Barofsky – how dare you give Congress this kind of fodder? Don’t you know they’ll start thinking this bailout might have been bad, and that maybe the people will get a whiff of that, and this rally will evaporate? I mean – the Congresscritters might start saying stuff like this:

“If the banks can’t tell us how they’re spending TARP money, then maybe they shouldn’t have it,” said Brooklyn Rep. Ed Towns, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

Here’s the Squawk video. Enjoy:

CNBC has been touting “Porn: Business Of Pleasure” for the last couple weeks, which you’d think would be good news for ratings. However, unfortunately, it looks like the documentary is going to involve a lot of pulling out. Wait, get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about ADVERTISERS, silly:

EXCLUSIVE – CNBC’s porn special – yes, a CNBC porn special – is ready for its Wednesday premiere, but not everyone is turned on. “Porn: Business of Pleasure” will give viewers who normally want to know about things like oil futures “an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look inside the multibillion dollar pornography business.”

Sounds fun right? Not for the all-important business of sponsors.

According to multiple sources, Charles Schwab, a regular sponsor of the 5pmET Fast Money program (as well as others) pulled its sponsorship from the program after a preview segment made it seem like Schwab was associated with the sex doc. Melissa Lee, anchor of Fast Money, also hosts the “Porn” special.

Worth noting that Chucky hasn’t bailed on CNBC, just on this particular program. But maybe Schwab would’ve felt better about the special if all the skin-flick actors were rotoscoped?