could the dow hit 9,000 plus this week..??, page-53

I really think we might be underestimating the breadth of this crisis.

Whatever the US/European Governments are throwing at this crisis is simply not working, this bad bank option worked for Sweden but that was for just one country with one little property bubble and its taken since 1992 to past 2000 to work those assets off banks' balance sheets.

The Swedish crisis also only cost 4 per cent of the country's GDP and it involved nationalising some of the country's biggest banks.

I don't want to think about how much nationalisting Citi, Bank of America and possibly Wells Fargo (its Wachovia losses are going to be a killer) and JPMorgan (US Depression) will do for confidence/sharemarkets around the world.

England is also in trouble with its bank stocks down 80%+ except for HSBC. US and UK (people won't tell you) both face the prospect of pretty much being insolvent from their debts, along with crippling global recessions.

I'm really in no rush to invest right now, past lessons have shown that markets can take two decades to get over major crashes, and this is the most major one of them all surely.

Confidence is the key ingredient missing here, and it takes a VERY long time to get confidence back for a herd of people.

From Bloomberg:

After the 1929 crash, the Dow fluctuated between about 100 and 200 until 1950 when it began a sustained move higher. From 1966 to 1982, the average traded between about 600 and 1,000.