NO ONE likes to be the bearer of bad tidings.
To detractors who complain that I am all "gloom and doom", I would like to say that as the markets reporter of a major newspaper, it would have been irresponsible to pretend that it is business as usual when the world is reeling from its biggest destruction of wealth in history - all within the space of a few weeks.
So far, the financial hurricane lashing Wall Street with increasing ferocity has only touched Singapore lightly.
Sure, our stock prices have been battered to two-year low levels, but that isn’t the same as the outright panic experienced in the US and European markets.
This morning, the benchmark Straits Times was down 90 points, or 3.75 per cent, in a knee-jerk reaction to Wall Street's 449 point-plunge last night.
There have been other scary moments.
Last Thursday, for example, financial stocks were whacked after Merrill Lynch cut its call on the sector, after musing if Singapore banks were safe havens anymore, trotting out the usual reasons like "not cheap valuations" and falling property prices.
But some traders noted that its feeble "sell" argument flies in the face of the fact that local banks are among the strongest capitalised financial institutions in the world, having raised billions via preference shares in recent months to bolster their capital bases.
Short-sellers now spearheading the collapse of bank stocks across the globe have been smart enough to cast their sights elsewhere where there are easier targets to be found.
Any attempts at the sort of abusive short-selling seen on Wall Street would have been beaten back by a massive shares buy-back effort by banks here.
And that leads me to the next point that I want to raise in this column - the US government's latest efforts to restore calm on Wall Street by expanding a ban on naked short-selling to the entire US stock market.
Short-selling involves the selling of a stock which an investor does not own in the hope of buying it back later at a lower amount than the price at which they sold short.
In July when the US slapped a month-long ban on such a practice on 17 financial stocks, it had already received considerable flak. As some had warned at the time – quite rightly as it turned out - such action would provide only temporary relief unless the original cause of the mess was cleaned up.
The likelihood is that there would be a relief rally on Wall Street tonight, as short-sellers scramble to cover their positions, as the ban takes effect.
But it is unfair to blame short-sellers for Wall Street's debacle.
Short-sellers are merely imposing the ruthless discipline, cutting down the outsized egos of investment bankers who failed to heed the writing on the wall that the era of unbridled greed is over and that they should not be looking over their shoulders for a bailout for taking irresponsible risks.
If the US financial giants now beset by fears of bankruptcy had built their houses on strong foundations in the first place, they would not have to contend with the barbarians - in the form of short-sellers - pounding at their gates.
Sure, some will say that it is easy to comment in hindsight that these troubled firms should have used the temporary reprieve extended to them in July to take the tough decisions to clean up their acts.
Now, that they are paying a heavy price for their previous procrastination, let's pray that they use the breathing space extended by the US government to get their act together swiftly.
Asian markets staged a big rally in afternoon trading, with the benchmark Straits Times Index gaining 4 points in late trading even as I write, after falling 100 points before mid-day close.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is only down 123 points before the close of trading, as it climbed back from a loss of 1354 points.
It just goes to show how swiftly the market mood can swing when investors realize how a tweak in the US trading rules may trigger a massive short-covering exercise on Wall Street tonight.
As I explained to a colleague, a ban on short-selling will give Wall Street the breathing space to restructure.
In the past 24 hours, Lloyds Bank bagged Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), Washington Mutual put itself on the auction block, while Morgan Stanley had gone shopping for a marriage partner. Expect more hasty marriages to be arranged in the next few days.