Quote Originally Posted by Fragony View Post
what is it so extremely important about something that can crash without really affecting anything.
Well - at lot of people in the financial sector are already losing their jobs (and no - these are not only people who made oodles of money anyway).
Due to the overall uncertainty companies and people in general are pushing back larger investments/purchases, e.g. you will see less people willing to build a new house or buy a new car right now (same goes for medium-sized investments like e.g, a new TV or dishwasher).
The automotive industry is typically one of the first to be affected - usually very dramatically at the beginning of a downturn. Lower sales and production of cars means loss of job in the automotive industry and it also has an effect on more basic industries like metals or chemicals (AFAIK the chemical major BASF makes ~15% of its business with the automotive industry).
Again - loss of jobs in these industries. Typically you will see these ripple effects going through various industries and due to the global nature of business also across regions (Wal-Mart actually sources quite a lot of stuff from China)

Unfortunately it seems that the financial crisis created such a fear of a real recession, that this fear is enough to actually kick-start this recession.