On Friday, lightning struck down and stocks plunged.
As of newsletter time, the Dow dropped a whopping 500 points and oil continues to be in a major rout, to say the least. Oil falling below $30 a barrel, coupled with a sell-off in Chinese stocks, added to mounting concerns about slowing global growth. A fresh batch of U.S. economic data released this morning was also not optimistic, which added to the downside pressure on U.S. stock indexes.

Wait…What did Soros say last week about 2008? Oh yessssss, he compared this market to the global market meltdown of that fateful year. The Royal Bank of Scotland also came out this week, suggesting investors to ‘sell everything – comparing today to a pre-Lehman Brothers.

Allianz’s Mohamed El-Erian said this week that China’s recent efforts to devalue the yuan are at the expense of other nations, and may result in a weaker global financial system. “[I]n pursuing its domestic objectives, China risks inadvertently amplifying global financial instability,” he said.

Maybe China needs a gold standard? Bloomberg Intelligence's Ken Hoffman says that just might be what the world's second-largest economy has to do.

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