– The Senate has passed a modified version of the $700 billion bailout bill Congress shot down on Monday. The bill passed 74 to 25.

– The bill passed by the Senate includes provisions to increase the FDIC’s bank deposit insurance limits and a $150.5 billion package tax cuts.

– Despite the passing of the bill in the upper house, US stock futures slipped this morning. MarketWatch reports that “S&P 500 futures fell 9.9 points to 1,158.50 and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 5.5 points to 1,573.25. Dow industrial futures dropped 71 points.”

– There are reports that the Fed is mulling another rate cut to further juice up the US economy with easy credit.

– The ECB, however, has held rates steady in the eurozone, despite a deteriorating economic climate.

– The chill wind blowing through the US has hit auto sales hard. “US auto sales dropped below 1 million last month for the first time in more than 15 years as some consumers struggled to get financing and others were frightened away from showrooms by bank failures and turmoil on Wall Street,” reports AP.

– Ford’s (NYSE:F) US sales “fell an unadjusted 34.6% in September to its weakest levels of the year due to a weakening US economy and tight credit conditions,” according to Reuters.

– The crisis is also pumping up junk bond yields as  Yields over benchmark rates on US junk-rated corporate bonds have widened to the highest on record, according to Merrill Lynch data.

With borrowing costs soaring, the market for junk bonds has all but shut. High-yield borrowers sold $845 million of bonds in September and $674 million in August, the slowest two-month period in at least a decade, Bloomberg data show. Issuance this year totals $59.8 billion, about half of last year’s tally.

–  Dig into into the US economy’s fundamentals doesn’t exactly inspire hope, either. Here are three data points from yesterday’s 5 Min. Forecast that are ominously bearish:

1) U.S. manufacturing activity plummeted in September. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) says production sank to a score of 43.5 during the month. That’s the lowest level since 2001. A score of 50 is considered mildly healthy.

2) 8,000 jobs were lost in September. Most economic doctors expected 55,000 lost jobs, so this reading is perceived to be good. Overall, according to the employment consultants ADP, the economy has shed 80,000 jobs in 2008.

3) After taxes and inflation, real disposable income fell nearly 1% in August — the third monthly drop in a row. At the same time, the Commerce Department’s measure of inflation, personal consumption expenditures (CPE), rose to 2.6% — a 13-year high.