Down Doobie Doo Down Down

Wow. The week's finally over. In terms of the Dow, it may not mean anything more than we now have two days (or is that three--the market isn't open on Columbus Day, is it?) in which the market isn't going to go down any further. But for the past several days, we've really seen what a roller coaster can be like. Here's how the New York Times sums it up:

It was one of the wildest moves in stock market history, and perhaps a fitting conclusion to the worst week in at least 75 years. The Dow and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index both closed down 18 percent for the week. The Dow has never had a week that bad in its 133-year history. The S.& P. has fallen slightly more only twice before — in 1929 and 1933. This month was the first time that the S.& P. had fallen by more than 1 percent for seven days in a row.

We certainly can't know what's going to happen next, but on Thursday night, public radio's Marketplace ran a very helpful segment about how, whatever we might be going through at the moment, it's not a replay of the Great Depression. While that's not greatly reassuring, it is somewhat reassuring, and these days, we should be happy with what we can get. You can read a transcript of the segment or listen to it at the link.