Just in case your head is in the sand...this is what is going on in todays horrific trading markets:

Bailout bill fails; Dow drops more than 500 Markets fall apart after the House narrowly rejects the $700 billion plan to bolster the financial system. Energy prices fall and clobber energy shares. Citigroup buys Wachovia assets in a deal with FDIC assistance. Apple leads tech shares lower. Latest Market UpdateSeptember 29, 2008 -- 15:00 ET Republican Congress members said during a press conference that they are going back to the drawing table on the financial plan as both political parties blame each other for the failure to pass the plan. Stocks plunged this afternoon, with the Dow Jones industrials off more than 500 points, after the House of Representatives narrowly failed to approve a $700 billion rescue plan for the nation's financial system.  At 3 p.m. ET, the Dow was down 538 points, or 4.8%, to 10,605. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was off 77 points, or 6.4%, to 1,136, and the Nasdaq Composite Index was off 146 points, or 6.7%, to 2,037.  The Nasdaq-100 Index ($NDX.X), which tracks the biggest Nasdaq stocks, was down 128 points, or 7.7%, to 1,544, its lowest intraday level since Sept. 11, 2006. The plunge was largely due to Apple (AAPL, news, msgs), down 16.9% to $106.51, Qualcomm (QCOM, news, msgs), down 10.5% to $41.01, and and Google (GOOG, news, msgs), down 8.8% to $393.13. The three stocks were worth 47 points of the Nasdaq-100's decline. The selloff came as tech and energy and materials stocks sagged on worries that economies around the world were slowing rapidly and could eat into sales and profits.  The rescue bill initially failed by a vote of 207 to 226; 218 were needed for passage.  Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and the champion of the bill on the House floor, said he would assess the economic impact of the vote before proceeding. He blamed the Republicans for the outcome. But Republicans blamed a speech from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for turning a number of yes votes into no votes. "It poisoned our confidence," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. It is possible that Democrats and Republicans will negotiate a new version of the bill, but it did not appear that a new vote would come up today.  Traders on Wall Street were shocked by the outcome of the vote.  "It's pretty much a nightmare," Michael Nasto, the senior trader at U.S. Global Investors, told Bloomberg News. "This is the worst we've seen it since the credit mess started. Until we know exactly why they didn't pass it, we're going to be selling off for a while." "What you're seeing in this sell-off is that investors are quite aware just how severe the ramifications will be if a plan, in some form, is not put in place," said Chris Conefry, a trader at MadisonPropTrading in New York. "The credit markets were not stable before this happened. Now they're going to be even more frozen," said Bill Gross, chief investment officer at Pimco, one of the largest money management firms. "It's ultimately the creditworthiness of the U.S. economy that's at stake here."  Adding to the day's worries was another domino going down in the mortgage-market mess. Citigroup (C, news, msgs) will acquire Wachovia's (WB, news, msgs) banking operations in a deal facilitated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.  Crude oil was down $9.29 to $97.60 on concerns about weakening global demand.