How about this from hartfordbusiness.com:

Hurt by a record-setting run for crude oil and renewed concerns about the health of the banking sector, Wall Street ended a dismal second quarter Monday with blue-chip stocks on the cusp of their first bear market in almost six years.
After a 10.2 percent drop last month, its biggest June loss since the Great Depression, the Dow Jones industrial average is now at 11,350, or 19.9 percent below its October all-time high. The Dow is flirting with its first bear market - a drop of 20 percent or more - since the 2000-2002 bursting of the Internet bubble.

The U.S. stock market has lost $2.1 trillion in value this year - $1.4 trillion in June alone, says Dow Jones Indexes. "Talk about a tough month," says Sam Stovall, chief strategist at Standard & Poor's.

Not to be too depressing, but has anyone noticed how similar the last few weeks have been to the period leading up to the big Depression?

470 points down in two days is pretty strong. I know, I know... diversify and stay in for the long haul, what goes down goes back up. But does it always? At some point things just go down and never go up again. I just wonder...

How about the 650 spread today? That has to be a record.

Down 350 points at noon and then up by almost 300 points at closing.

Personally, I'm trying to figure out which way to jump.

Down 306 yesterday. Up a little so far today.

I think "recession" may end up being a mild term to use.

When the Dow dips below 12,000 by the end of next week, a barrier will have been broken that will lead to something more like "panic mode".

All week the expectation was that today (12/11/07) the Fed would announce a .25% interest rate reduction.

OK, the Fed does as expected and within 2 hours the market drops 294 points.

I don't get it.

Anybody?

And now we have the sub-prime mess.

Easy credit, easy life, spend it now and worry about the consequences later.

That is the attitude that has prevailed since the '60s from the top of the food chain down to the little guy who wants a flatscreen TV more than being debt-free.

One of the bleak scenarios spelled out in Crash2 is the failure of the dollar. Today, the dollar is about 1.50 to the Euro.

But here is the bad part, and this is happening a few years earlier than predicted: Iran and Venezuela are screaming for OPEC to get off the dollar as the standard for purchasing oil.

The Saudis have been good at ignoring the noise from Iran and Chavez, but I am sure many members are starting to get nervous about the strength of the dollar. Requiring a hard currency other than the dollar would put the dollar into a tailspin and then the worse case scenario might kick in: China deciding to get away from the dollar. When that happens, it will be a global bank rush trying to dump all the US debt owned by foreign banks.

Is this just the beginning?

Hard to say.......No one yet knows just how many bad loans are out there and who invested how much in those loans.

For those who claim it's a panic, the facts so far prove it's not....One big house after the other has collapsed this last few weeks. It wasn't panic that caused them to fail, but plain and simple math-they lost their butts in risky loans....It was a feeding frenzy where anyone who had money to lend attempted to lend it at any risk or risk being left out of the potential profits.

Now the markets keep attempting to recover....They've made several bounces and retreats driven by growth but held back by lack of credit and fear to invest....Growth potential IS there-there are many, many good investments begging for cash, but they are going to have to wait till the dust has settled and investors regain confidence.

Only time will sort it all out....either way, this earnings season is over for the casual investor.

This is just the beginning, and in line with the predictions in Crash2:

Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Central banks in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada added about $135.7 billion to the banking system in an attempt to avert a crisis of confidence in global credit markets.

The Federal Reserve, in a second day of action in concert with the European Central Bank, provided $38 billion of reserves and pledged further funds ``as necessary,'' in a statement unprecedented since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The European Central Bank loaned 61.05 billion euros ($83.6 billion) after injecting a record amount yesterday.

``This is a situation of great uncertainty,'' said Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice chairman who's now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Central banks ``are all injecting credit in hopes that collectively they can stabilize things.''

Central banks in Japan and Australia also added funds as money-market rates rose. The subprime crisis is spreading after international investors in the past year piled into the U.S. market for debt backed by mortgages.

We have moved to a faster, more reliable sever. As usual, this has caused a few glitches. If you notice graphics missing or the like, it will be fixed in due course.