So much bull, gone so fast

Slate covers the news front about the Crash of 2008:

It's all about fear. Wall Street was in full panic mode yesterday as a wave of terror washed over investors, who couldn't hit the sell button fast enough during the last hours of trading. It marked the seventh consecutive day of losses on Wall Street as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 679 points, or 7.3 percent, closing below 9,000 for the first time since 2003. This means all the gains from the last bull market have been effectively wiped out.
The New York Times points out it was the "busiest day in New York Stock Exchange history," and the Wall Street Journal notes that the 11th largest plunge in the history of the Dow "put the stock market either in, or nearly in, a crash."
USA Today helpfully churns out several statistics to put the recent declines in context and points out that Standard & Poor's 500 index is on track for its worst year since 1931.

Rico says 1931 wasn't the problem, it was 1933 (when Hoover 'fixed' the economy) through 1945 (when Truman rode the post-war bounce) that was the problem...