What the heck happened yesterday?

The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 was bad, but in some ways I think what happened yesterday was scarier.

In case you missed it, the Dow Jones index plunged about 10% in about five minutes. "About $700 billion of U.S. stock- market value was wiped out in less than 10 minutes," Businessweek reported. $700 billion. That's $1.2 million dollars down the drain every second. The Wall Street Journal reported that shares of companies worth billions of dollars earlier in the day were trading at one cent, while shares of Sotheby's briefly jumped from $35 to $100,000.