As I write this, Asia is pretty much done with its trading day, and last I checked both Nikkei and Hang Seng were down significantly (3.66 and 4.13 respectively). To keep it in perspective, the domestic 200point drop after the Bear Sterns debacle was only 2% of our market value, and the drops in asia come after the fed cut its lending rate sharply AND financed the purchase of Stearns by JP Morgan. By The Way- anyone up on their economic history should find that deeply and darkly humorous that JP Morgan rides again into the middle of another wall street credit crunch, if in name only.

Keep your fingers crossed. I think this next week with the manufacturing numbers and earnings coming in will be pivotal. If the Market can hold without a significant drop until summer, then I'll take a big sigh of relief. I think a lot of hedge funds are going to get slaughtered in the impending collapse of the Oil, Wheat and Corn bubbles, and if the market tanks along with that... then Real Estate, Commodities, AAA Bonds, and Stocks will all be down, inflation up and credit nowhere to be found for even the most flush.... And the fed printing up money by the bucket and pouring it on bad banks and bad debt. A perfect storm.

But I must say, people are already calling each other on the east coast and exchanging rumors of banks that are not going to be open Monday. Banks not opening is a bad thing, but people believing they are not going to open is just as bad, if not worse.

Bad times. I still hold out hoe that we're looking at a 'worst in decades' recession, and not a 'worst in living memory' problem.

Yeti