Crisis!

9/15/08 Update:

In remarks made by GM's President and Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson at Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit, Henderson said of this weekend's turmoil, "I would say things have been difficult already. Capital markets have been quite difficult, and this is just going to make it more so. In terms of raising capital, you've got pretty much closed debt markets for anything other than triple-A-rated companies. You don't have that avenue available to you. If you look at any company that's got business challenges, the markets are very difficult to deal with."

The chaos that is ensuing on Wall Street is sitting on investors' stomachs like a bad Indian lunch: at first you're just a bit queasy, but at any point you might have to make a run for the door. I was actually prepared for a worse drop than the roughly 4 percent loss that we saw today, but we're only at the start of the week. Let's revisit this topic on Friday.


Original 9/14/08 Post:

This isn't a financial blog, so I won't even make any attempts to discuss what has been an earth-shattering weekend for Wall Street. Whatever comes our way on Monday, it will have profound implications for our financial markets. With Automotive News running a story (sub req) about credit, not fuel prices, being the number one deal killer, a further tightening of credit markets isn't going to be good news for anybody. Certainly there are some folks who will delight in the fact that some fat cats will get their due, in the end it'll be the "little people" who will pay the highest price. Here's hoping that this dog's bark is worse than his bite.