It so murky going ahead...

christmas08 268, originally uploaded by Ou yang Youheng.

From the POEMS daily report:

As the U.S. stock market heads into the last week of the year, what was inconceivable just 12 months ago is now a stark possibility: 2008 could be the worst year ever for Wall Street.

The U.S. market's most tracked benchmark, the S&P 500, is down 40.6 percent since last year's close with only three trading days left in 2008. Given the market's hair-trigger volatility this year, that's just one bad day away from surpassing 1931's 47.1 percent drop, the biggest yearly decline ever. As it is, the market's swoon this year will cement 2008's place in history by at least one measure: eviscerated
wealth. A record $7.3 trillion of stock market value has been obliterated this year, according to the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index, the broadest measure of U.S. equity performance.

Investors ran for the exits this year as a collapse originally thought to be contained to the U.S. home mortgage sector morphed into a full-blown global credit crisis that now threatens global recession.
The fallout from frozen credit markets permeated all sectors from banks to autos to resources, while unemployment climbed, house prices plummeted and cash-strapped consumers curtailed their spending.