A bitter pill - and a violent tremor on Wall Street!

This is incredible - live blog - updates at the bottom
They're just approaching the vote on the bail-out/buy-in in the US House of Representatives.

I was much entertained at watching the Dow Jones Industrial Average as Rep. John Boehner was speaking. He's minority leader of the Republicans in the House. When he started, the Dow was down about 2.67% on the day. His preoration was somewhat gloomy - and the Dow sank a bit more. He then started speaking all the more powerfully in favour of the plan - and the Dow was at only (!) 2.35% down on the day when he finished.

Rep Hoyer is now quoting Spiro Agnew. Not the Democrats quotee of of choice normally....

Update: With 1 minute to go it's a real nail biter with 86 representatives still to vote and the nays are ahead. But apparently they can go on for hours.

Update 2: The initial vote has timed out and there are 27 still to vote. The Nays have reached 220 which is past the halfway marked. The Dow is absolutely gone through the floor! A 600 point loss on the day! Incredible!

Update 3: The Dow is down more than 5% on the day! Commentators are saying that this hasn't happened in at least 20 years. 227 Nays.

Update 4: On 9-11, the Dow dropped 684 points. So far today, the drop was, at one point, starting to clumb above 600. Apparently there has been some calming down talks going on, so now it's recovered a tad to 466 points down since opening.

Update 5: The voting is stuck at 207 yeas against 227 noes. There are 434 members, so once you go past 218, you've won a vote. Apparently there is arm twisting going on. Could go on for four hours until Nancy decides to kill it. Looks like the no vote will take some shifting. So far, two nay votes have shifted to yea. At this rate it could go on for hours.

Update 6 at 19:05: Crikey. The gavel has come down at 206 yeas amd 227 nays. Dow Jones down 4.7%. The plan is at least temporarily dead.

Update 7: There's now lot of procedural discussion going on, about a reconsideration.