in the bigger scheme of things

[DR_1]

in the bigger scheme of things the "drop' in stocks due to the unfortunate events in japan, is irrelevant. If you do the 5 yr dow trend, the latest drop is in line with the "noise".

[Rams]

Does the noise match up to 9.0 on the Richter scale?Has nothing to do with Japan, just human psycology( there should be a "h" somewhere in there}

[#3]

THis is not an ordinary pullback - it is pretty severe IMO, and we can expect a lot of volatility as east battles west for bull/bear supremacy. World debt vs GDP is sitting at 200%, or something like that - so we are sitting with massively geared economies. Now that is all and well - but introduces a lot of risk. So when an event threatens fragile capital allocation, and poses a likelihood of more debt to be introduced - you can expect panic to kick in