Stocks' Brutal Week

Let us survey briefly the financial wreckage: The Dow Jones tumbled 6.2 percent last week, its worst single week since October; at one point, it dipped below its closing low set in October 2002 when the dotcom bubble burst; Citigroup closed at $1.95 a share; Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan both advocated bank nationalization; so did powerful Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer. The White House, meanwhile, reiterated that it "continues to strongly believe that the privately held banking system is the correct way to go." Of course, this may just be a rhetorical ploy, since publicly admitting it was considering nationalization would depress stocks even further.