Spirit of America BookstoreU.S. Timeline – 2001 to 2010
Ancient Times - 3500 B.C.E to 1490 C.E.
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America As Empire
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The Obama Era (Part I)
America As Empire
War Film Festival - Middle-East War Movies
- 2001: Kellogg acquired Keebler, putting thousands of elves out of a job.
- 2001 Jan 15: Launch of the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia by
Larry Sanger and
Jimmy Wales.
- 2001 Jan 17-18: Power service blackouts affected 1.5 million customers in California; Governor Davis declared a state of emergency {ended 13 November 2003}.
- 2001 Jan 20: George W. Bush was sworn in as President #43, serving two misbegotten terms; Dick Cheney was sworn in as Vice President.
- 2001 Feb 22 thru April 17: Executives of Enron Corp., Exxon-Mobil Corp., Conoco, Shell, British Petroleum, Massey Energy and other oil, coal & gas giants met several times with Dick Cheney's secret Energy Task Force.
- 2001 Feb 27: The Bush administration began illegal wiretaps of Americans, specifically of calls at coerced/cooperative national & regional telephone companies. The irony: These illegal wiretap operations did NOT prevent the attack on September 11th (and perhaps were not designed for that purpose).
- 2001 March 19-20: Power service blackouts in California affected 1.5 million customers.
- 2001 May: Disappearance of Washington, DC federal employee Chandra Levy; her presumed murder was a media sensation for many months. Her bones were found in Rock Creek Park in May 2002, and her supposed lover California Congressman Gary Condit lost re-election in November 2002. In 2010, an illegal immigrant was convicted of her murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
- 2001 May 7-8: Power service blackouts in California affected upwards of 167,000 customers.
- 2001 May 11: Convicted American terrorist Timothy McVeigh was executed in Terre Haute, Indiana for the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.
- 2001 Aug 6: President Bush ignored the Presidential Daily Briefing memorandum reporting an imminent terrorist threat by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
- 2001 Sept 11: Muslim terrorists commandeered four airliners: two crashed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan (2,823 deaths); Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC (189 deaths); and Flight 93 crash-landed in rural Pennsylvania (44 deaths).
[next-day newspaper headlines, in new window]
The non-profit 911day.org was set up in 2002 and got Congress to recognize the day as a National Day of Service in 2009.
- 2001 Sept 17:
 U.S. stock markets reopened; one-day loss of 684.81 points (only 7.11%).
- 2001 Sept 21: Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to $8,235.81, the worst 5-day loss since the Great Depression.
- 2001 Oct 7: Beginning of the war in Afghanistan, as U.S. and British forces launched air attacks against military and al Qaeda targets. (The war is still going 16 years later.)
- 2001 Oct 26: President Bush signed the spurious 342-page U.S.A. Patriot [Uniting & Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept & Obstruct Terrorism] Act.
- 2001 Nov: The U.S. military, under orders from the U.S. State Department, allowed terrorist Osama bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora province in Afghanistan.
- 2001 Dec 2: Enron Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and laid off 4,000 employees in Houston the next day.
- 2001 Dec 10: Nobel Award Ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden; the Sveriges Riksbank Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was shared by three Americans - George A. Akerlof of University of California, Berkeley; A. Michael Spence of Stanford University in California; and Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University in New York City.
- 2002 Jan: Opening of the illegal torture facilities on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
- 2002 Feb 7: Dubya signed the memo stating that the Third Geneva Convention did not apply to al-Qaeda or to the Taliban, thus authorizing torture.
- 2002 March: The NASDAQ Composite index bottomed in the 1900s, a drop of 62% since March 2000.
- 2002 March 5: Serious nuclear incident at Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio when employees discovered that corrosion had eaten nearly thru the top of the containment vessel; repairs took two years, and operator FirstEnergy paid $28M in fines.
- 2002 March 13: George W. Bush stated "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not concerned about [bin Laden]."
- 2002 May 16: Release of the fifth 'Star Wars' movie,
"Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones".
- 2002 June 26: Ninth Circuit Court Newdow decision allows 'under God' phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance.
- 2002 June 27: U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Cleveland Ohio school voucher program.
- 2002 July 1: The NASDAQ Composite index closed at 5-year low of 1,403.80; Dow Jones Industrial Average index down to 9,109.79.
- 2002 July 24: Nine coal miners became trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County of Western Pennsylvania; all nine men were rescued 77 hours later.
- 2002 Aug 26: V.P. Dick Cheney spoke at V.F.W. convention, which included the statement that "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- 2002 Oct 8: A federal judge approved President George W. Bush's order to reopen West Coast ports, ending a 10-day labor lockout that was costing the U.S. economy $1-2 billion a day.
- 2002 Oct 9: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index bottomed at 7,286.27 (down 2.9% for a 5-year low), NASDAQ index closed at 1,114.11.
- 2002 Oct 10: U.S. Congress passed the 'Authorization For Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002' by a vote of 296-133, which is cited as permission for Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
- 2002 Nov 25: President Bush signed the infamous Homeland Security Act.
- 2002 Dec 2: Defense Secretary Donald R. Rumsfeld signed the memo authorizing specific interrogation techniques that could be used to torture prisoners in U.S. military custody.
- 2002 Dec 31: The U.N. inspection team admitted to finding no evidence of W.M.D. in Iraq.
- 2003 Feb 1: The space shuttle Columbia exploded 200,000 feet above Texas, on landing approach to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, killing the seven crew members.
- 2003 Feb 5: U.S. Secretary of Defense Colin Powell spoke at the United Nations, using faked-up pictures and recordings to make the case for an invasion of Iraq.
- 2003 Feb 7: The Center for Public Integrity published a copy of a draft Department of Justice document marked 'confidential' on its website; the document title was "Domestic Security Enhancement Act", which soon gained the nickname 'Patriot Act II'; the proposed legislation was never officially considered in Congress.
- 2003 Feb 20: A fire sparked by pyrotechnics broke out during a performance by the rock group Great White at The Station nightclub in Warwick, Rhode Island; 100 people died and 200 were injured.
- 2003 March 19: Beginning of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. [Due to time zone differences, the bombardment of Iraq began March 20th, local time.]
- 2003 April 9: Baghdad fell to U.S.-British forces.
- 2003 May 1: President Bush declared 'end of major hostilities in Iraq' on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California; a total of 138 U.S. soldiers died during the Mini-War.
- 2003 May 22: President Bush signed Executive Order 13303 granting immunity from prosecution to oil companies operating in Iraq.
- 2003 June 3: Mysterious federal ceremony claiming Republican victory in ending regulation of U.S. banks.
- 2003 June 25: The twelfth consecutive reduction of the Federal Reserve's prime lending rate, to 1 percent (while the inflation rate was at 2%), which provided the conditions that permitted the housing/debt bubble.
- 2003 July 14: Columnist Robert Novak revealed the identity of covert C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame Wilson {an act of treason}, apparently based on a leak to him from the White House in retaliation over an op-ed article by her husband Joseph C. Wilson IV that was published in The New York Times.
Spirit of America's TraitorGate / TreasonGate Timeline Page
- 2003 July 23: Petitions gathered by Republican Darrell Issa asking for recall of California Governor Gray Davis were certified by California's Secretary of State; the special election was then scheduled for October 7th.
- 2003 Aug 13: California Secretary of State released a list of the record 135 candidates to replace Gov. Davis if the recall should pass.
- 2003 Aug 14: The Northeast Power Blackout of 2003 left 55 million people in Ontario, Canada and in eight U.S. states without electricity for up to 12 hours.
- 2003 Oct 7: California election on the recall of Gov. Gray Davis, won by Austrian body-builder & action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- 2003 Oct 10: Columnist Robert Novak revealed the name of Plame's 'brass plate' C.I.A. front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates {his second act of treason}, resulting in the death of further clandestine American agents.
- 2003 Oct 10: Starbucks’s launched their seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte, which is still very popular 20 years later.
- 2003 Nov 13: Governor Davis officially ended California's power crisis state of emergency.
- 2003 Nov 17: Arnold sworn in as Governor of California.
- 2003 Dec 13: Fugitive Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. Army 4th Division troops, in a hole beneath a hut near Tikrit, Iraq.
- 2003 Dec 31: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index ended the year at $10,453.92.
- 2004 Feb 4: Launch of pioneer social networking site Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg and several fellow Harvard students.
- 2004 March 12: FBI Director Robert Mueller and Acting Attorney General James B. Comey, Jr. told President Bush that they could not participate in the illegal Stellar Wind wiretapping program; Bush backed down.
- 2004 April: Hearing at the S.E.C. that gave the five top Wall Street investment banks permission to release capital reserves to invest in 'exotic instruments'.
- 2004 May 17: Massachusetts became the first stste to allow same-sex marriages.
- 2004 May 28: The Central American Free Trade Agreement {now DR-C.A.F.T.A.} was signed by six countries; President Bush signed the agreement into U.S. law on 2 August 2005; the Dominican Republic signed on August 5.
- 2004 June 28: Handover of power to the interim government in Iraq.
- 2004 July 16: Martha Stewart was sentenced to prison for insider trading.
- 2004 Aug 8: Launch of the Messenger space probe to the planet Mercury.
- 2004 Oct 6: Charles Duelfer, C.I.A. Special Advisor for Strategy concluded in a final report that Iraq had no W.M.D or W.M.D. programs when the U.S. invaded the country.
- 2004 Nov 2: Dubya won the election, America lost.
- 2004 Nov 3: First felony convictions against internet 'spam' distributors – In a Leesburg, Virginia case, Jeremy D. Jaynes received a 9-year prison term & his sister Jessica DeGroot received a $7,500 fine.
- 2004 Nov 8: U.S. forces initiated a retaliatory takeover of Fallujah, Iraq.
- 2004 Dec 26: An earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean off Sumatra sent a giant tsunami toward land that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 14 countries.
- 2005 Feb 2: Amazon, Inc. launched the Prime subscription service, offering 'all-you-can-eat' shipping in 48 hours for a monthly fee; in April 2021, Amazon reported that Prime had more than 200 million subscribers worldwide.
- 2005 May 16: Release of the sixth 'Star Wars' movie,
"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith".
- 2005 May 17: U.S. Senate unanimously approved the "Real I.D. Act", requiring Federal electronic ID cards to be in use by May 2008.
- 2005 May 31: WaterGate whistleblower 'Deep Throat' was revealed as then-F.B.I. #2 officer W. Mark Felt.
- 2005 June 6: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Gonzales vs Raich that federal drug laws supercede state & local laws that allow medical use of marijuana.
- 2005 June 21: One former member of the Ku Klux Klan was convicted of manslaughter exactly 41 years after three out-of-state civil rights workers were beaten and shot to death in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and their bodies buried in an earthen dam; 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
- 2005 June 23: The U.S. Supreme Court decided in Kelo v. City of New London that governments may sieze property for private development projects.
- 2005 Aug 29: Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Louisiana, followed by severe flooding due to breaks in levees & dams (caused by Bush Administration funding cuts of 80% for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). The eventual death toll for the region was 1,800.
- 2005 Sept 9: President Bush issued an Executive Order cancelling protections of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, so that victims of Hurricane Katrina will not be paid minimum or prevailing wages during reconstruction.
- 2005 Sept 23: Winds of up to 120 MPH from Hurricane Rita breached the levees of New Orleans again.
- 2005 Sept 29: John G. Roberts, Jr. was sworn in as the 17th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
- 2005 Oct 24: Hurricane Wilma battered Florida with winds up to 125 MPH.
- 2005 Dec 20: Judge John E. Jones III of the Pennsylvania Federal District Court decided in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case that 'intelligent design' is the equivalent of religious fundamentalism's creationism myth, and thus teaching either concept in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment principle of the separation of church & state.
- 2005 Dec 31: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index ended the year at $10,717.50.
- 2006 Jan 2: A methane gas explosion at the Sago Mine in Upshur County, West Virginia killed 12 miners; one miner was later rescued alive.
- 2006 Jan 30: Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down after serving almost 25 years.
- 2006 Jan 30: A filibister against Judge Samuel Alito's appointment to the Supreme Court was defeated in the U.S. Senate by a cloture vote of 75 to 25.
- 2006 Jan 31: Alito confirmed to Supreme Court, 58 to 42.
- 2006 Feb 1: Ben S. Bernanke sworn in as Chairman of the
U.S. Federal Reserve, succeeding longtime Fed Chair
Alan Greenspan.
- 2006 March 9: President Bush signed the U.S.A. Patriot Act Improvement & Reauthorization Act.
- 2006 May: The United States and Canada officially renewed the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) treaty; the organization was founded in May 1958.
- 2006 May 25: Former Enron Corp. chairman/CEO Ken Lay was convicted on six counts of conspiracy
& securities & wire fraud, and also on four counts of bank fraud in a non-jury portion of the trial (of 35 counts) and former
Enron Corp. president Jeffrey Skilling was convicted on 19 of 28 counts of conspiracy & fraud.
- 2006 June 7: al-Qaeda #2 leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in Diyala, Iraq.
- 2006 Aug 17: Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor found that the Bush Administration had clearly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for five years by mass
wire-tapping of American citizens without F.I.S.A. warrants, and that such activity was unconstitutional and illegal.
- 2006 Aug 24: The International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto was no longer a planet, but was instead a mere 'dwarf planet'.
- 2006 Oct 3: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index surpassed previous high of 14 Jan 2000, going above 11,000 to $11,750.28
- 2006 Oct 4: Dow Jones Industrial Average Index 'bull market' second day runup to $11,850.
- 2006 Oct 4: Launch of Wikileaks in Iceland by Julian Assange and others.
- 2006 Oct 17: The population of United States reached 300 million.
- 2006 Oct 19: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index rose above 12,000 for the first time, closing at $12,029.50.
- 2006 Nov 6: Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld resigned; the event was not made public until late the next day.
- 2006 Nov 7: American people took back both houses of Congress: Democrats won 30+ seats in the house and 5 seats in the Senate.
- 2006 Nov 7: Arnold re-elected as Governor of California.
- 2006 Dec 7: Seven G.O.P.-appointed U.S. Attorneys were dismissed (later growing to nine) without explanation. Subsequent developments revealed that the real cause was that the attorneys had not manufactured bogus indictments against Democratic candidates just prior to the elections of November. A year later, officials who had resigned because of the scandal included Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Deputy A.G. Paul McNulty, Acting Associate A.G. William W. Mercer, Chief of Staff for the A.G. Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff for the Deputy A.G. Michael Elston, Michael A. Battle, Bradley Schlozman, and D.O.J. White House Liaison Monica Goodling. A grand jury was empanelled in June 2008 to investigate the matter.
- 2006 Dec 30: Iraq President Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging, for 'crimes against humanity'.
- 2007 Jan 4: Nancy Pelosi was elected the first female Speaker of The House after Democrats took control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
- 2007 Jan 16: U.S. Senator Barack Obama launched his successful campaign for the U.S. presidency.
- 2007 Jan 16: The strategically-delayed trial of I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby for perjury began, on charges of lying to federal prosecutors about his actions in the outing of covert C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame Wilson.
- 2007 Jan 28: Establishment of International Data Privacy Day which is currently observed in the United States, Canada, Israel, and 47 European countries.
- 2007 Jan 29: Libby's lawyers admitted into evidence a note in Dick Cheney's handwriting stating that 'The Pres' gave the order to reveal Valerie Plame's identity, final proof that Bush & Cheney & Libby & others committed treason.
- 2007 Feb 18: The Washington Post exposed the terrible conditions at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland being provided to veterans and to soldiers returning from service in Iraq & Afghanistan.
- 2007 Feb 27: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index plunged 546.02 points and closed down 416.02, or 2.8% - the worst day of trading since 11 September 2001; the S&P 500 fell 50.33, and the NASDAQ Composite dropped 96.65.
- 2007 March 6: The jury returned convictions on 4 of 5 counts against Libby; he could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
- 2007 April 16: College student Seoung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia before taking his own life.
- 2007 April 18: The Supreme Court decided the Gonzales v. Carhart case, allowing a nationwide ban on 'partial-birth abortion' procedure; the vote was 5 Catholics to 4 Americans.
- 2007 April 24: Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich announced H.R. 333 specifying three charges of impeachment against VP Dick Cheney; referred to the House Judiciary Committee.
- 2007 April 25: Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed above 13,000 for the first time.
- 2007 June 5: I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby sentenced in the TraitorGate / TreasonGate scandal to 30 months in prison, two years probation, and $250,000 in fines.
- 2007 July 2: A federal appeals court three-judge panel refused to grant a delay for Libby going to jail; the jail sentence was commuted by President Bush later the same day.
- 2007 July 7: The Live Earth Concerts, held in nine cities around the world, garnered 2 billion viewers world-wide (counting television, radio and internet) and 30 million American viewers, which is more than the annual Super Bowl.
- 2007 July 19: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed above 14,000 for the first time at 14,000.41, a new all-time high (and a rise of 6,714 points (92%!) since the low point of 7,286.27 on 9 October 2002).
- 2007 July 27: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index plunged 311.50 points (or 2.26 percent).
- 2007 Aug 1: Right-wing propagandist Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased 64% of the Wall Street Journal & Dow-Jones companies for $5+ billion (pending government approval).
- 2007 Aug 7: Barry Bonds of the New York Giants baseball team hit his 756th career home run, breaking Hank Aaron's longtime record; Bonds eventually scored a total of 762 home runs.
- 2007 Aug 9: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $13,239.54, down 387.18 points, or 2.8% - the second worst day of the year; the S&P 500 fell 44.40 to $1,453.09 (almost 3%), and the NASDAQ Composite dropped 56.49 to $2,556.49 (nearly 2.2%).
- 2007 Aug 24: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales phoned in his resignation to President Bush (on vacation at Crawford, Texas).
- 2007 Sept 16: The 'Nasur Square Incident' in Baghdad, Iraq where Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries shot 17 unarmed civilians to death without cause. (Former Blackwater employee Nicholas Slatten was found guilty in December 2018 of first-degree murder as the first shooter in the 2007 incident.)
- 2007 Sept 20: Over 30,000 people marched in Jena, Louisiana in support of six Afro-American high school students denied civil rights by malicious prosecution over a schoolyard brawl in December.
- 2007 Sept 26: U.S. Senate approved the Bush plan to invade Iran; the vote was 76 to 22.
- 2007 Oct: Fire storms in California, at Malibu and several in San Diego County.
- 2007 Oct 9: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index reached an all-time high of $14,164.53.
- 2007 Oct 19: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index lost 23 percent of its value.
- 2007 Nov 1: Fourth worst trading day of the year on Wall Street – the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index dropped $362.14 (2.6%) to $13,567.87, NASDAQ fell $64.29 (2.25%) to $2,794.83, the S&P 500 fell $40.94 (2.64%) to $1,508.44.
- 2007 Nov 5: Beginning of the W.G.A. writers strike (lasting just over 3 months).
- 2007 Nov 6: Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich re-introduced identical text of H.R. 333 as Privileged Resolution H.R. 799 specifying three charges of impeachment against VP Dick Cheney; again referred to the House Judiciary Committee.
- 2007 Dec: An economic recession in the U.S that lasted at least 16 months (officially declared ended in March 2009), precipitated by the collapse of the housing market – which led to a worsening economy and the Bush Administration's Economic Meltdown that began in September 2008.
- 2007 Dec: The Lakota Nation indigenous people unilaterally withdrew from all 33 treaties with the U.S. government.
- 2007 Dec 3-15: United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia (not much got done, due to U.S. intransigence).
- 2007 Dec 27: Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide bombing at a political rally in Rawalpindi.
- 2008 Jan 2: The U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of C.I.A. interrogation videotapes and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed an outside prosecutor to oversee the case. {Essentially, the Bush Administration crooks are again investigating themselves for yet another alleged crime.}
- 2008 Jan 11: Bank of America agreed to buy failed Countrywide Financial, America's biggest mortgage lender, in a $4.1 billion stock deal.
- 2008 Jan 30: Democratic Party candidate John Edwards 'suspended' his campaign for the office of U.S. President (just prior to the 23-state Super Tuesday primary elections).
- 2008 Feb 5: The Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index fell 3% to 12,635.16.
- 2008 Feb 5: The 'Super Tuesday' Primary election for both parties in 19 states, with one-party contests in 4 states.
- 2008 Feb 12: Writers Guild of America strike ended, after three months.
- 2008 Feb 18: Cuba's dictator Fidel Castro announced his retirement, effective with the election of his successor.
- 2008 Feb 24: CBS News finally broadcast their "60 Minutes" report on Alabama political prisoner Don Siegelman; the broadcast was scheduled opposite the 2008 Academy Awards, and then thirteen minutes was blacked out in Alabama.
- 2008 March 14: The commodity gold reached $1,000 per ounce, closing at $1,003.50.
- 2008 March 18: U.S. Sen. Barack Obama delivered a historic speech on racism in America entitled "A More Perfect Union" at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- 2008 March 24: The Federal Reserve loaned $29 billion to J.P. Morgan Chase Bank for acquisition of defunct Bear Stearns.
- 2008 April 1: First day of the 'Trucker Shutdown' national strike by independent truckers in America, in protest of diesel fuel prices being over $4.00 a gallon (while their pay has not gone up).
- 2008 May 1: One-day wildcat strike by I.L.W.U. at all ports on the U.S. West Coast to protest the war and the economy.
- 2008 May 12: The Great Sichuan Earthquake, aka Great Wenchuan Earthquake (after the location of the epicenter), measured 8.0 magnitude and killed around 90,000 Chinese.
- 2008 May 14: John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama as the Democratic Party candidate for President.
- 2008 May 26: The Phoenix mission to Mars landed on the surface of the Red Planet.
- 2008 June: A grand jury was empanelled to investigate the improper dismissals of nine U.S. Attorneys in late 2006.
- 2008 June 8: The average pump price for unleaded regular gas/petrol reached $4/gallon across America (per A.A.A.).
- 2008 June 9: Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced a Privileged Resolution specifying 35 charges of impeachment against George W. Bush. The 65-page document took 5 hours to read into the Congressional Record, and was referred to the House Judiciary Committee.
- 2008 June & July: Millions of acres of forest fires in California and other Western states required calling in the National Guard to relieve exhausted firefighters.
- 2008 June 13: Crude oil futures rose above $139 a barrel.
- 2008 July: All-time high average U.S. gasoline pump price of $4.11 per gallon.
- 2008 July 11: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index dropped below $11,000 for the first time in 2 years.
- 2008 July 23: Hurricane Dolly hit the Texas coast, the worst since 2005's Hurricane Rita.
- 2008 July 24: Federal minimum wage raised to $6.55 per hour.
- 2008 July 30: Congress passed a $300 billion F.H.A. bailout bill.
- 2008 Aug 23: U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama announced his choice of U.S. Senator Joseph Biden as his VP running mate.
- 2008 Aug 28: Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech before over 80,000 people at Denver's Mile-High Stadium and 38 million viewers on television.
- 2008 Sept 1: Hurricane Gustav hit the Louisiana coast, later knocking out 90% of the power in Baton Rouge, the state capitol; 49 U.S. deaths are attributed to the storm.
- 2008 Sept 7: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave away $5 trillion of taxpayer indebtedness to bail out the bankrupt Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac quasi-governmental mortgage guarantor entities.
- 2008 Sept 13: Hurricane Ike, the most massive Atlantic hurricane yet recorded, hit the coast of Texas & Louisiana;
71 U.S. deaths are attributed to the storm, with 226 still missing as-of October.
- 2008 Sept 16: The Federal Reserve agreed to pay $85 billion for an 80% stake in the failed A.I.G. brokerage insurance firm.
- 2008 Sept 21: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two major investment banks in the United States, both confirmed that they would become traditional bank holding companies, bringing an end to the era of investment banking on Wall Street. {Except that they did not . . .}
- 2008 Sept 29: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index dropped a record 777 points (-6.98%) as the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the Bush Administration's irresponsible stock market emergency bailout plan. The cascading effects included Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index falling 801.41 points (-4.29%), Europe's DJ Stoxx Index falling 133.21 points (-4.89%), U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index falling 269.70 points (-5.30% ), the Euronext 100 Index falling 39.18 points (-5.46%), and Canada's TSE 300 Index falling 840.93 points (-6.93%).
- 2008 Oct 3: Congress passed a $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill.
- 2008 Oct 6: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index fell below $10,000, the first time since 2004.
- 2008 Oct 8: The Federal Reserve authorized further payment of $37.8 billion for A.I.G.
- 2008 Oct 13: Treasury Secretary Paulson partially nationalized nine major banks for $25 billion each.
- 2008 Oct 15: Dow Jones Industrial Average Index second-worst freefall event: dropped $780.87 during the day, ending down 733 points. (Worst freefall event is now 6 May 2010.)
- 2008 Oct 31:
 A white paper entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” appeared on the mailing list metzdowd.com; it bore the byline of one Satoshi Nakamoto, the address of a new website – bitcoin.org – and the outlines of the first decentralized digital currency.
- 2008 Nov 4: Barack Obama won the election for the U.S. Presidency with 53% of the popular vote, and with 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173.
- 2008 Nov 10: The U.S. Federal Reserve paid out another $27.5 billion for A.I.G. losses.
- 2008 Nov 19: U.S. Senate hearing on the automotive crisis, with unsworn testimony by the heads of Chrysler, Ford & General Motors.
- 2008 Dec 5: Secret, interest-free loans by the U.S. Federal Reserve of $1.2 trillion to troubled 'too big to let fail' banks – including $107 billion to Morgan Stanley, $100 billion to Citigroup, and $91 billion to Bank of America – that were not revealed until August 2011. Calculations in November 2011 concluded that the banks' profit from the deal was $13 billion.
- 2008 Dec 9: Negotiators revealed the terms of an emerging deal between the White House and Congress under which a short-term $15 billion bailout for the Big Three automakers would be overseen by a federal trustee (or 'car czar').
- 2008 Dec 19: President Bush announced approval of the automaker bailout plan, which would give loans of $17.4 billion to G.M. and Chrysler.
- 2008 Dec 22: The Kingston Fossil Plant Slurry Spill in Roane County, Tennessee released 5.4 million cubic yards (or 1.1 billion gallons) of gray sludge into the surrounding area, which in some places remains six feet deep; the toxic waste spill is 100 times the size of the Exxon Valdex oil spill in Alaska, and is expected to cost almost a billion dollars to clean up the environment.
- 2008 Dec 31: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index ended the year at $8,776.39.
{moot} 'Stop Bush' Page at Working Minds website
{moot} 2008 Elections Page at Working Minds website
Spirit of America Bookstore's 'G.O.P. Economic Meltdown' Page
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