Ben,
I'm sorry to tell you this, but there's a new sheriff of stockdroppyville, and you haven't got anything on him. George Papandreou has officially just shown you how to cause an epic evaporation of cash. When you talk, the market drops because you really don't have much that you can do to spur it. However, when Mr. Papandreou talks, he tells us things like that he plans to put the Greek EU bailout to referendum! As of now, if this does in fact go to referendum, the bailout will not pass. The reason the bailout would fail in a popular vote is that one stipulation for the payments is a set of restrictions of government spending. Pardon me if I'm not surprised by a population that got itself into such a ridiculous mess by constantly spending what it doesn't have (Public Debt/GDP since 1999) deciding that it wants nothing more than to keep spending...Even if it will cause a default in the very near future. We saw a huge growth in the world's stock markets after the bailout agreement was originally reached because the market was extremely oversold due to fears of the a Greek (although we'd be making a large mistake if we were to ignore Spanish, Portuguese, or Irish situations) debt default that would cause massive losses to banks holding the debt around the world. However, by announcing the plan to hold a referendum, all of the uncertainty that drove losses in September has returned, and as a result, gobs of cash have disappeared. In closing, I implore you, Mr. Bernanke, to please not engage in a game of one upsmanship.
-FSG
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