I am absolutely convinced that the stock market is a psychological game. Think about it. The analysts say its going to crash, the people hear them, the people sell sell sell, the market crashes. The analysts say the market will go up, the people buy buy buy, the market goes up. Now, I'm convinced that its going to bottom out soon and people will say collectively "hey, it's done, lets buy before it goes up and we lose out on these great discounts" and it'll go back up. What pisses me off is that the stupid analysts caused the trouble in the first place.
Now don't get me wrong: a lot of the tanking we're seeing now is due to the big businesses and their problems. However, I heard a quote on the news the other day. I think it was Warren Buffet, but in any case the guy said " You don't know how dirty the laundry is until you hit the rinse cycle. We're in the rinse cycle now. When its done, we'll have laundry that's a lot cleaner than it was before". And it'll get dirty over time, and need to be cleaned again. So goes life.