This is indiscriminate selling. It has nothing to do with fundamentals. Everybody has forgotten about the long term; nobody is even looking past next week.
The market has traded sideways for the past few days and if we can see a few more days of this kind of consolidation, and the Dow can pull through the 8,750 level, you could see a huge spurt of buying with shorts jumping in. The Dow could easily hit 9,000.