If you haven't already, get used to this headline. You'll be probably see it again. Today, the Dow closed at 6,763 points, dropping 4 percent and setting the stock market back to 1997 levels. AIG is hemorrhaging $678 million per day; the housing bubble is only halfway deflated; and no one really has any clue as to whether the banking "stress tests" will actually work. It's going to take a while for the economy to get better again, and there will only be more bad news in the meantime. And all that means that a return to Dow 14,000 isn't going to happen anytime soon. Right now, the Dow is more an indicator of panic than anything else. It's reacting to bad stuff that's already happened in the previous month and sometimes even the previous quarter. Every time a company announces a big loss, the government presents a new plan, or Tim Geithner nervously scratches his head, the Dow is going to plunge out of fright. The index says absolutely nothing about how much is actually being produced. Or how the housing market is faring. Or how much freight is being shipped around the world. Or how much banks are lending to each other. Or how much people are paying for goods. There are actual indices for these things, and they all say more about the economy's future than a stock ticker. Probably the most frustrating part about the focus on this index of fear is that it only perpetuates more of it. It tells the general public that the economy is in a miserable state without really giving any reason why, doing nothing but freaking people out and giving CNBC commentators something to bluster about. So when the Dow hits 6,400 and prompts people to start talking about how it's 1996 all over again minus the "Macarena," just follow Douglas Adams' advice: don't panic. --Alexandra Gutierrez
