NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stock were poised for a mixed start on Tuesday, after suffering their worst pounding in seven years day before.About two-and-a-half hours before the market open, futures for the S&P 500 and Dow were down, while Nasdaq futures were up. On Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 504 points, or 4.4%, its worst performance since the post-terrorist attack sell-off of Sept. 17, 2001.
The seven-year plunge stemmed from several big events that hit the markets at once: Lehman Brothers (LEH, Fortune 500) filed the biggest bankruptcy in history, Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) said it would buy Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) and AIG's (AIG, Fortune 500) stock took a dive over its cash-raising troubles
I would also like to mention that Bush is trying to get the government to "forgive" a lot of these large bankruptcies. I'll look it up later but I got some stuff to do this morning