On Friday, the Dow lost another 224 points.

[jds6958]

"On Friday, the Dow lost another 224 points.

The Wilshire index, meanwhile, is helpfully quoted in dollars. So you can see immediately how much money people are losing. From the top around 15,900 to last week - when the index bounced around 14,600 - is a loss of $1.3 trillion.

That's in U.S. dollars. But the U.S. dollar has lost about 10% of its value this year. So, the real world loss to investors is more than twice that amount…or around $3 trillion.

(John Connelly, treasury secretary under Richard Nixon, once famously remarked to a group of European visitors: "It's our dollar, but it's your problem." That was back in the days when America still had an almost-positive trade balance. Now, when the United States needs nearly $3 billion in foreign money every day, the dollar has become OUR problem too.)

Add to that the loss in housing values - probably about another $1 trillion, so far.

And then, there are the losses, both announced and still hidden, in subprime debt and derivatives, which could tote up to another $0.5 trillion or so.

Hey…we're starting to talk about some real money here - a combined loss of wealth equal to $4.5 trillion…or nearly 10% of the entire net worth of the United States of America."

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/

[Tall Timbers]

recently seen, in my opinion, are very insignificant. Just to match black Friday losses in 1987 on a percentage basis, the djia would need to lose several thousand points in a single day.

The markets, including the housing market, may get a lot worse in the not too distant future, but so far, aside from oil prices, things are relatively peaceful out there... of course, there is a dark cloud on the horizon, but there usually is.

[jds6958]

recently seen, in my opinion, are very insignificant. Just to match black Friday losses in 1987 on a percentage basis, the djia would need to lose several thousand points in a single day.

The markets, including the housing market, may get a lot worse in the not too distant future, but so far, aside from oil prices, things are relatively peaceful out there... of course, there is a dark cloud on the horizon, but there usually is.

I respectfully disagree. The calliber of the situation brewing has the capacity of eventually melting down every fiat currency of an economy depending on the USD.

The markets would close down to prevent a 1987 disaster. The PPT is attempting to manipulate the markets by forcing a soft landing, but they are having a hard time doing it. The USD will suffer from the PPT's actions...

[Tall Timbers]

I may be mistaken but I believe that our USA outstanding debt exceeds the entire world's cash reserves by about 50%. Our government's spending is so out of control that eventually there will have to be a reckoning... but this isn't a recent issue, it has been a potential problem waiting to happen (still waiting to happen) for decades. Besides the formal impoverishment of our nation, the reckoning could easily become the catalyst for a global war. It will be interesting to see how things fall out. In the meantime, there are all kinds of difficulties out there, not a whole lot different than we've had for decades. The cold war era was really scary, then it ended and now things seem even worse because we don't have that omnipresent cold war threat of total nuclear annihilation to keep everyone in check. Granted, worldly things look bad, but I can't remember when they didn't. That, is why I say things are relatively peaceful out there.