Off to another bad start

Wednesday's semi-recovery seemed way too tentative - and so we have the Dow down around 175 points in the first few minutes of trading. Again, there's no one reason for the drop - a combination of factors, much of it being described as a "reassessment of risk." Also, there are rumors about a subprime lender in the U.S. being in trouble, which might or might not be true but sounds plausible enough for folks to be worried. And yesterday's bounceback was way weaker than what's typically seen in healthy bear markets (a 200-point gain would have been a little more like it).