Just Another Day At The Office

I'm interning currently at a business daily, and needless to say, this is quite an exciting time to be doing so. Maybe I should substitute the word interesting for exciting, since exciting might point toward a positive turn of events, which is patently not the case. Quite the contrary, and it is quite safe to say that almost anyone with any vested interests in the equities market has not slept a wink in the last two weeks. Almost everyone seems to have severely eroded net worths, so that does not hold any fascination anymore. It is quite a sight to see though, people who have to write, day in and day out, about this perennial volatility in world markets.
The US' sub-prime crisis seems to be far deeper and more serious than was thought initially, and there are fears that the rot might spread to the prime market as well. Stocks have been plummeting worldwide, apart from a minor boost they received on the announcement of a Fed rate cut on Friday. This however seems to have been nothing more than a brief respite, and if today's performance is anything to go by, we're in for the long haul, as markets seem to be headed only one way at the moment, down. For India, a combination of pitiable Leftist tomfoolery (that has "left" the government's credibility in tatters and its future as anyone's guess) and a mass exodus of FII 'hot money' has lead to people being quite resigned in their
acceptance of this sudden erosion of the equity market.
Nowhere does this seem to be more the case than at my office. How much do you belabor the point? Everyone above the age of 10, with a average IQ, understands that this is not a good time at the stock market. The sup-prime crisis has been discussed to death. I'm sure my ten year old cousin could explain it to you, so pervasive is the madness.
What do you write then? How do you even give your article a headline to catch the reader's eye?It's quite a study in cynicism, patience and perspective, to see the editors at my office trying to answer these questions without tearing their hair out. How many times can you write "bloodbath" or " volatile" to describe events on Dalal street? Unstable markets is stale news. So what do you tell people? You don't raise their hopes because you're unsure yourself. Everyday seems to be more of the same. So in some senses, a 438 point drop becomes "just another day at the office." Nobody knows what the Fed is going to do, nobody knows how the Dow will behave on a certain day, so for all intents and purposes, nobody has a clue about anything. All we know is that markets seem to be falling almost everyday, and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing we can do about it.
"Hanging on in quiet desperation" I think captures the mood and sentiment of the country, and the editors of Business Standard will know, only too well, what you're talking about.