Financial Crisis?

Are we truly in a "financial crisis"? Yeah, you may see the stock market drop 300 points one day, but rest assured, it will most likely jump right back up before the week is over. For instance, this week with all the major drops and increases we actually ended up just about breaking even. So why all the panic? Even with these huge peaks and valleys, the stock market continues to historically show upward mobility. I even saw that the market is up 18% over the last 5 years. Not a bad return at all. You can easily see the upward trend in the chart below which shows data for the DOW for the last 20 years.