Urgently moving to contain a deepening credit crisis, the Federal Reserve is trying to restore confidence in panicked financial markets by becoming a lender of last resort for Wall Street investment houses that on Monday can begin securing short-term emergency loans.

There’s been a lot of coverage recently about the historical relationship between elections and market uneasiness. Some commentators this weekend even blamed the huge selloff on Friday on Obama’s “unfriendly” tax policy and Huckleberry’s “populist” tax agenda.

Rather than getting into all the relevant economic and political discussion, we can look to some, you know, facts...