scenes from a meltdown

Bloody Monday, Terrible Tuesday, and Now Weird Wednesday

Well, the Fed “rescue” of AIG doesn’t seem to have helped all that much. The Dow dropped almost 500 points today. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley stock plunged “the most ever,” according to Bloomberg. The S&P 500 had its biggest percentage drop since September 2001. The Nasdaq sank to a two-year low. Perhaps most worryingly, a big money-market fund, the Reserve Primary Fund, announced that it lost money — and money-market funds are supposed to be super safe. And everywhere, analysts beat the drums of doom:

• “There’s a growing sense that there’s no end to this in sight,” Edward Yardeni, the investment strategist, told the Times.

• “It’s a virus that’s running through the market,” Anthony Conroy, head of trading at BNY ConvergEx Group, a New York stock brokerage, told the Journal. “If investors don’t know what a firm’s exposure is [to credit markets], they’re just running away.”

•”It’s ugly,” Michael Mullaney, a Boston-based money manager for Fiduciary Trust Co., told Bloomberg. “It’s about the worst I’ve seen it in 25 years.”

Buy gold! Though you may have to eat it in a few years’ time.

Bloody Monday, Terrible Tuesday, and Now Weird Wednesday