Well, I was listening to a radio show this morning and the host, who isn't a financial person in the slightest made a very significant point on this whole mess.
The economy is being manipulated by the media. All the media does is say how bad things will be. We are doomed. It's the end of the world and all our stocks are going to be worthless. So the US credit rating went down. I fail to see why this should cause a mass sell off of private companies stocks.
People, even investment bankers are like lemmings. They follow the crowd and all jump because they feel they are going to loose it all. Well what happens when more than 50% of people all do the same thing? The morons that all want to cash out and save themselves now, cause the market to fall for no reason other than short sightedness. Investing in stocks isn't a short term thing.