I believe that actual recession in US is because the attractive mortgages given to all the people who wanted to afford a house, because banks started to loan money to every people even with no credit history, and this how can be related, was a stupid decision even when investors of real estate were only interested on grow, due the good view of the economy, and well, this seemed ok at the beginning but, what happens next when every single person could afford a house? Well, they only were paying interest at the beginning but, then when they couldn´t sell their homes before pay all the mortgage is when the crash comes down, and the crisis comes.
The stock market for investors is going riskly and course nobody will risk on that, or the ones who where exited gambling on them, are now crying due sudden down or recession. As result federal reserve was supplying money to get up of crisis, and banks didn´t want anymore to get in this bad play, and as an obvious result of all this unemployment was expected. And if we notice we are in a consumer society where almost all of our money is making circles, when crisis like this happens, consumers are out of money, so there would be a offer-demand problem, causing all the market a down, which is reflected in a economic crisis in general, for example the low sales of GM, Ford, etc.
Let consider not all the people who buy stocks are perceptive to this changes enough before to don´t put in risk all the money, instead buy more, therefore, is difficult to know what is going to happen exactly with the economic situation.
And finally, I believe government has a unique strategy to benefit themselves, and another people, due the huge amount given of federal reserve to banks in order to solve the crisis, is like put in debt all the country to generating interests, and in a short or long term put situation in control again, believing most of people that government has saved the day again.