Are you surprised? Times Square's National Debt Clock, which has been tallying up money owed by the U.S. government since 1989, is running out of spaces.

In September 2008, the digital dollar sign was eliminated to make way for an extra digit—the "1" in $10 trillion (the national debt is currently $10.2 trillion). Now, a new clock is in the works that will make room for a quadrillion dollars of debt, according to the Associated Press. Anticipated completion is early 2009.

The Federal Reserve's key rate cut today aims to steady the markets and stem the financial crisis. But it also changes the rate consumers are charged for loans.

For consumers, it's all about the prime lending rate, which is used for everything from car loans to home equity loans. Banks typically take cues from the Fed, which means the prime lending rate often moves in tandem with the fed funds rate.

Case in point: Bank of America, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo all said Wednesday that they're lowering their prime lending rates from 5 to 4.5 percent, which matches the 0.5 percent fed rate cut.

Vanguard pioneer John Bogle, who said last month that the U.S. government appears "punch drunk" on its proposals to rescue the financial system, told NPR last weekend that the current crisis is a "speculative orgy like nothing we have ever seen before in the history of the United States."

"Turnover in the stock market is...more than twice as high now as it was in 1929. We've become a market dominated by speculators and not by investors," said Bogle. "And Wall Street plays a big role in this, simply because they like to get out 'new products,' and they don't pay much attention to the quality of those products. They're trying to do all this complex innovation to make money for themselves...and they sell it to people who ought to know better who are just looking for more yield."

Listen to the entire interview here. And click here for a market take from Vanguard's new CEO, Bill McNabb.

Following a brutal day in which the pan-Europe Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index slid to its deepest decline since 1987, European stocks showed a sign of life Tuesday on hopes of interest-rate cuts from the world's leading central banks. Those hopes are high, given the Reserve Bank of Australia's surprise 1 percentage point rate cut overnight.

Here's what the pros have to say:

Morgan Stanley says the Fed may cut rates before its next scheduled meeting (October 29-30), and although coordinated action isn't likely, moves are "probable" by several G10 central banks. The firm sees 2009 global growth at 2.7 percent, a forecast that's down 0.8 percent from last month:

For the first time since 2004, the Dow Jones industrial average skidded below 10,000, a "psychological barrier," as some would say.

After the Dow first cracked 10,000 on March 30, 1999, Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, was asked why that barrier is significant:

It's arbitrary to the minute in terms of when you take the prices of the stocks. But all that aside, I don't deny the tremendous psychological impact of the Dow getting into the 10,000 area. It is the world's most famous average. It's the way people think about stocks and conceptualize the market. As a result, it has tremendous psychological import.

This isn’t a great time for cash investors when you figure the rate of return you’ll get after the inflation bite. But currently, bank products are the best of the lot, says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, who also writes a Fed blog.

“Investors are focused on hunkering down and preserving principal that they’re looking at cash regardless of its after-inflation return,” says McBride. “If you’re going to do that, look at CDs, bank savings accounts, and money market accounts.”

The run on money market funds looks to be changing. Investors have steadily been pulling cash out of their money market funds over the past few weeks on news of the implosion of the Reserve Primary Fund.

But new data indicates they may be regaining confidence in the funds. For the week that ended September 30, assets in money funds rose $12.4 billion, according to iMoneyNet. Institutional investors were responsible for $9 billion of that gain, and $3.4 billion flowed in from individual investors.

The Treasury Department's money-fund bailout is most likely responsible for the asset inflows. Announcements from major fund companies that they'll participate in the guarantee program presumably played a part as well.