Whoops.

This is your economy on Dubya. Sorry to all the investors who are suffering through this one. I am trying to learn more about this strange world, and have been thinking that the only sensible thing to do right now is to buy precious metals, such as gold, but then I see gold is down a bit too. Not like the 10% the Dow has lost in the past couple weeks, but still- it's inconsistent with my understanding. I think the attempted bailout/stabilization efforts from the Fed and other central banks may have something to do with it, but at the same time- what was the total dollar numbers injected last week? I'd heard $168 Billion from the Fed alone, and then other sources on top of that. That money is gone AND the Dow is down 10%. Also interesting to note is the consistent bleed of value. If the market drops enough, trading is halted (I think it's 500 points from the Dow, but I don't know for sure). If I'm right on that, this means that if this loss were accelerated just a little, the market would have closed twice, and been threatening a third shutdown.

Yeah, and if a frog had wings... I know. I don't expect that we're anywhere near the bottom of this slide.