Many people are claiming that the worst may be over after this next wave of poor earnings; the VIX has reached historical highs, writedowns have peaked, consumer confidence hit a low, and many people are calling for capitulation. However, many others insist that there will only be more writedowns to come as the credit crisis spreads into commercial real estate and consumer credit. We have already seen substantial writedowns from JPMorgan and others in consumer credit cards while many large commerical projects are being sold off or put on hold due to the lack of funds. This thing could last a lot longer...

From Forbes:
Banks have written down more than $100 billion since the summer. Yikes. Now the bad news: There are still billions worth of potentially toxic securities sitting on the books. The additional $1.3 billion write-down disclosed by JPMorgan on Wednesday was just the latest loss big banks have reported in the fourth quarter. Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ) is expected to report a sizeable write-down when it reveals fourth-quarter numbers on Thursday, by some estimates in the neighborhood of $15 billion. Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ), Wachovia (nyse: WB - news - people ) and other big lenders report next week and are also expected to write down billions of securities holdings.