You can't point out that we are all going to die when your readers are suits and your advertisers depend on Greater Fools investing. Yet even given that, I couldn't help but think what optimistic fools they were when I came across an October '08 issue at the library free magazine rack. Page 52 had a graph depicting the Dow and how much value it had lost over the last century. A decline of 89% during the Great Depression. 42% during the early '70's oil embargo. 33% October '87. A mere 17% decline when LTCM went under in '98. The Dot Com bust saw a loss of 34%. And the housing bubble through last fall saw the Dow down 21%. The graph was screaming out how safe we were since we were so far from the declines of the Great Depression. Now, fast forward to February 2009. The Dow has lost just under a shade of 50%. That is worse than the '70's oil embargo. And over half way to the losses in the Great depression.