Joe Sixpack (of St Pauligirl)

We had hoped to stay away from dissecting the mis-statements of Sarah Palin. If John McCain wants to make a joke of the presidential election, that's his business, and anyway, Andrew Sullivan has a cottage industry in keeping track of her. But here she is in the only safe media venue the campaign could find outside of Fox News, Hugh Hewitt:

And you know, even today, Todd and I are looking at what’s going on in the stock market, the relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we’re taking, probably $20,000 dollars last week in his 401K plan that was hit.

Over the last week, and that's before Tuesday's surge in the market, the Dow Jones industrial average is down about 6%. So if the First Dude is down $20,000 and was keeping his investments in a diversified stock portfolio, as he should, that means that he had about $330,000 in his retirement account. As Palin says, "It’s time that normal Joe six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency". That must be relative to the tens of millions that Cheney brought to the job.

Palin has another concern:

So there again, John McCain’s got some great ideas on granting authority, for instance, to the FDIC, making sure that our deposits are insured. He wants to increase that deposit insurance cap of all of our money, our savings, from $100,000 dollars up to $250,000 dollars, so that families like mine, so that we don’t have to worry about our money being safe or not under FDIC.

So she is telling us that they have bank deposits over $100,000, on top of the First Dude's stash in his retirement account -- otherwise why would they care about the FDIC limit?

Maybe we're getting some hints about why we still haven't seen sight of a Palin tax return.

UPDATE: If you think these amounts don't seem large, take a look at page A14 in this article.

FINAL UPDATE: Informed estimates indicate at least $1 million in total household assets. Joe Sixpack, indeed. Note that the AP article covers the Palins' real assets and income, not their still undisclosed financial wealth.

ONE MORE: Our estimate of their financial assets is confirmed as being in the right range. Many Joe Sixpack households have no financial assets.