by Calculated Risk on 4/20/2009 03:54:00 PM

I'm looking forward to the housing news later this week!

And on the false Stress Test rumor this morning, from Bloomberg: Treasury Says ‘No Basis’ to Report on Bank Testing

A U.S. Treasury spokesman said there’s no basis to a blog posting that buffeted financial stocks by saying that most of the nation’s largest banks are insolvent.

Why are they even responding?

DOW down 3.6%

S&P 500 down 4.3%

NASDAQ down 3.9%

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

The first graph is from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner): "Four Bad Bears".

This is the 2nd worst S&P 500 / DOW bear market in the U.S. in 100 years.

Note that the Great Depression crash is based on the DOW; the three others are for the S&P 500.

The second graph compares four significant bear markets: the Dow during the Great Depression, the NASDAQ, the Nikkei, and the current S&P 500.

See Doug's: "The Mega-Bear Quartet and L-Shaped Recoveries".