Black Monday on Wall Street?

I'm feeling it. New York City and New York State are feeling it. America is feeling it.

Feeling broke, that is.

      
   
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/business/15market.html?hp
News Analysis

Jittery Road Ahead

While some feared a precipitous decline in the markets, others hoped that Bank of America’s surprise announcement Sunday that it was buying Merrill Lynch might provide enough reassurance to calm investors.

“That would be seen as very good news,” Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investment strategist for Charles Schwab & Company, said of Bank of America’s $50 billion or $29 a share offer, a price far higher than Merrill’s close on Friday but less than a third of what the stock was worth early last year, before the mortgage crisis began to damage financial firms. 
(...)
Some even recalled the stock market crash in 1987, the biggest fall ever seen by the current generation of Wall Streeters. “This is an earth-shattering event, this is like a tectonic plate shifting event,” said Thomas Priore, chief executive of Institutional Credit Partners, a hedge fund active in credit markets. “This is welcome back to Black Monday.”