(This is what 8 years of Republican rule gets you.)

By: John W. Schoen - MSNBC

The spectacular collapse of two big investment banks — and the scramble by a major insurance company to stay afloat — has many on Wall Street and Main Street wondering: Is this as bad as it gets?

The answer is that nobody knows — not the heads of surviving banks, Treasury officials or policymakers at the Federal Reserve. The reason is that the true value of the investments being held by banks and other financial institutions cannot be known until home prices stop declining and the job market stabilizes. Until that happens, more losses are inevitable.

“I do not understand how we got into this situation,” said New Jersey Gov. Jon  Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs.

The financial storm that swamped investment banking giants Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch over the weekend shows no signs of weakening. The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 500 points Monday in its worst day since 2001. Insurance giant AIG, whose stock has been hammered by worries about its financial strength, was scrambling Monday to build its capital base and stabilize its stock price — which has lost more than 70 percent of its value in the past week.