OP - I wonder if you can tell me, I can't seem to find out for sure. Have those automatic breaks actually been removed yet or is it still a proposal?

I believe they were still in operation last night, which is just as well (as someone said to me this morning)because the market would have been down even more.

Meanwhile those floods in Mexico can't be good news for oil production (see thread and BBC link above) because apparently most of the oil export industry is shut down.

The sixty-four-dollar question. Will we see a 1000 point down day on the DJIA from current levels? Perhap when those market breaks are removed which would allow the big money to effectively hedge portfolios? Wouldn't be that much in the overall scheme of things. A 7.5% drop in one day would be big news of course, but not 'a largest event in history' by any stretch.