The recent meltdowns

The recent declines of both the A's and the stock market have been a concern. In the market, the speculative things in my portfolio sold off, the energy and utility stocks lost their gains, and anything financial (including preferreds of all stripes) or real estate related has gotten killed due to the subprime crisis and the flight to quality.
I had only one stock directly related to the crisis -- Countrywide (CFC) -- and got rid of it when it announced bad earnings and increased loan losses. It dropped about 3 points that day, to 31. Now it's in the low 20s. I've found that when the market is melting down, the only thing that makes sense is to sell stocks with fundamental problems -- not those that are just declining because of high betas.
As for the A's, their crisis is more a function of injuries than any other cause. Still, they don't seem to have the lineup that can compete, even for 2008, without improvement at shortstop and in center field.