Dow drops 1k and regains most - WOW

Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by almost 1,000 points.  People are calling this a "computer glitch" but the truth is nobody knows what happened yet.  It is likely that the initial panic was from investors were very nervous about the situation in Greece.

Some background on Greece.  What is most likely the most fucked up member of the EU voted today on an "austerity plan."  Basically this is a plan to cut government spending by a large amount including wage cuts to government workers.  Suffice it to say, it didn't go down well among the common folk who decided to stage violent riots.  And on top of this, the house of cards that is the EU is still to drop (Spain, Portugal, and Italy are next).

So investors are worried about this, and its likely that some stock crossed a threshold that triggered automatic selling.  I heard in at least one source that some trader at Citi entered an order for a billion instead of a million. That stock would likely be Proctor and Gamble.  It appears that the system worked correctly, and that the fast paced electronic trading was halted on the NYSE, allowing sensible selling to resume.

Since PG is a component of the Dow, the entire market went into a freefall.  My entire portfolio, consisting of autos, banks, oil ETF's and retailers was down 10%.  With the comeback I ended down a reasonable 4% but that was a scary day.

From what I gather the market worked exactly as it should have.  The safety systems kicked in and ending down 4% is nothing bad.  There are those who will argue that situations like these mean we need more government regulation.  This is wrong.

Why is BP solely responsible?

The massive oil spill off the cost of Louisiana is likely going to cost tens of billions of dollars to cleanup.  For some reason, the US government has said that BP is solely responsible for the cost of cleanup.  Why?

A large company called Transocean (ticker: RIG) actually owns and operates Deepwater Horizon.  BP has laid the blame on them (while promising to take all responsibility).  I think at the end of the day, RIG has a higher likelihood of going down over this incident.  While the US government may be blaming BP for everything, RIG will likely be named in a number of lawsuits over this disaster.

Also, to all of you who supported the Palin/McCain ticket, how's the mantra of "Drill baby drill" feel now?