The Dow is down about 300 points right now, and if you look at this chart, it shows that the market dropped like a rock when Treasury Secretary Tim Geither began to speak, a little after 11 am.

UPDATE: Among Geithner’s proposals were a “stress test” for banks to determine their need for capital support , a “public-private” investment fund of up to $1 trillion to help with troubled assets, and up to $1 tillion to support consumer and business lending.

He said that the $700 billion bailout plan that was approved last fall, while it saved us from even greater catastrophe, wasn’t comprehensive enough and it was poorly implemented. He said that right now, we needed fast action because, there is “more risk and greater cost to gradualism than agressive action.” The lesson of the New Deal and Japan in the 1990s, was not that government action failed, but that government, “applied the brakes too early.” He vowed that the Obama administration would “bring the full force of the United States government” to bear on the financial crisis.