Another rollercoaster day on the stock market as the Dow Jones industrials fell more than 200 points after opening this morning, following steep drops on Asian and European markets. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin says the situation is becoming dire.

Harkin says "It just goes to show you how much we’re in hock. As President Clinton said so many times, our bankers are China, Japan, Great Britain, a few other countries, Singapore. Mexico’s now our tenth largest banker." A flurry of stock sales started on Tuesday when China’s markets saw a large decline — nearly nine-percent. Harkin says there was a rebound Wednesday but they dropped again today.

Harkin says "When you get a country as big as China, we’re in hock that big, you can see what they can do. Since they have such a totalitarian society, their government can do things, set things in motion that can have huge ripple effects in our economy over here."

Harkin, a Democrat, shifts some of the blame for the foul financial situation to the Republican administration. He calls it "a warning shot that we better be about getting our own economy in order and quit borrowing so much money from other countries and quit going into deficit spending for things like that war in Iraq."