The Wall Street word of the day is: Ouch.

There’s lots of pain to go around anytime the Dow loses 500 points in a single day. Still, the SEC says it’s on the case, working to “maintain the smooth functioning of the financial markets” in the wake of Lehman Brothers’bankruptcy.

Will they succeed? Why not? Heck, somebody (or something) is going to turn this thing around, right?

At least somebody is benefiting from these troubling times. In light of the freefalls at Lehman and Merrill Lynch (which is being bought by Bank of America), financial risk managers are the rising stars of corporate America, writes CFO.com’s Robert Hertzberg. Theirs was a hot job title before the recent credit crunch; today, it’s ready to explode, with some 13,000 people registered to take the certification exam in November, up 36 percent from 2007.

What’s your best advice for weathering this economic storm?