The elephant in the grass that no one wishes to discuss is GREED. Corporate executives totally mismanage a company and are rewarded with huge bailouts by their cronies on the board. The only thing that matters is short-term profits and not the long-term health of a company. Just look at Enron. People are no longer willing to settle for 6-7% growth but require companies to push for 20-30% and the only way to achieve those kinds of gains is by cutting people. That can go on only so long. No one wants to produce anything anymore; they want to gain instant wealth through the stock market but get bailed out when things don't go so well. There's also a disconnect in the advice provided to us flunkies by the pros. They tell us hang on to your stocks, don't sell, look at the long-term. Well, it's not the little guy selling that's driving the market down; it's the pros and big fund managers who don't follow their own advice. In the meantime, the Feds have lost all interest in regulation thanks to 20 years of deregulation (a plague on both Democrats and Republicans.)