The biggest players seem to be selling shares in businesses that rely on US consumer spending. There's not a lot of confidence in the US economy right now. Does anybody know if legislation was ever passed to ensure that a repeat of 2008 wouldn't happen again? If not then I'd say that it could easily happen again. This volatility may be a sign of history repeating itself.

Disclaimer: I'm a real estate guy, not a stock guy. I'm also Australian so there's a good chance I don't know what the fuck I'm on about.

IMF says that China's stocks had inflated value. But it's lost 30% of it's value so far in the past month or so I think.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD/countries/JP-EU?display=graph

no, Japan is richer than Europe in many Ways

interresting video about it. A lot of Western propaganda blaming china now

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/business-34002662?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central
FTSE 100 closes down more than 4%
Posted at 16:31
The FTSE 100 share index has closed 4.67% down at 5,898.87 points after an extremely volatile day of trading. This is the tenth session in a row it has finished down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/your-money/stocks-and-bonds/advice-after-stock-market-drop-take-some-deep-breaths-and-dont-do-a-thing.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Advice After Stock Market Drop: Take Some Deep Breaths, and Don’t Do a Thing

Oh, sorry to hear that. Is he hurt much?

The amount of panic going on is getting ridiculous. The Chinese economy slowing down is something anyone could have seen coming. Economies can't grow at break neck speeds forever. They all eventually settle into a more stable, reasonable growth rate. What's happening here is all the amateur "economists" are just losing their minds because they don't get this. And it doesn't help that the media loves to latch onto this so that they can blame their political opponents for ruining the world or some nonsense.

I think it is just a much needed correction. investors have been overheating the market based on bad world market growth numbers. the IMF warned of this some time ago. personally I sold some time back and bought back in to the aussie market at 10am today. the drop could go a little further, but it would take some additional surprises for more significant drops. "should" be no more than another 5-8% downside.....but then markets are not always sane places

Paris is up 3%+ this morning, so totally this, nothing big.