Today marks the seventh straight day that the major U.S. stock market indices have fallen in what has become a very turbulent season for the economy, financial markets and for the financial services industry. It’s amazing how far and how fast we’ve fallen.

It was just a year ago today that the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its all-time record of 14,164.53. In a sad irony, this past Monday the 6th, the Dow closed below 10,000 for the first time since October of 2004 and the index closed below 9,000 today. All of this comes at the height of a heated presidential campaign and on the heels of a controversial $700 billion dollar government rescue plan to save the economy from the industry’s foibles.

As detailed in Corporate Insight’s Market Messaging report, many firms in our Monitor coverage groups have posted messages, images, and videos reassuring clients that, despite the current economic turbulence, they remain quite solvent. Unfortunately, it’s hard to put much stock in these statements anymore given the way major institutions seem to be collapsing on a weekly basis. It certainly doesn’t help that, in some cases, management projects a confident voice only to be brought low by events they couldn’t completely control.

Think back to the Bear Stearns case. In August of 2007, Richard Cioffiand Matthew Tannin reassured high net worth investors that the money managed within their two Bear Stearns’ hedge funds was safe. A few days later, those hedge funds collapsed. Along similar lines, the firm’s CEO Allan Schwartz was quoted in print and on television stating that Bear Stearns’ financial books were strong and the firm was not in jeopardy of bankruptcy. I think we all know what happened to Bear Stearns (RIP).

Since then, Lehman Brothers, WaMu and Wachovia have all gone bankrupt and/or been acquired in dizzyingly rapid fashion. In fact, things happened so fast at WaMu that we received a promotional email from the firm a few hours after JP Morgan Chase acquired it that encouraged us to “start saving for the holidays today” with a WaMu high-yield savings account. As noted in our Market Messaging report, both WaMu and Wachovia posted messages from their respective CEOs assuring clients that the firms would remain solvent just days before being acquired under duress. Wachovia’s President and CEO Robert Steel even went on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money to deliver the same message just two weeks before the firm was forced to sell to Citi/Wells. These institutions were pillars of the financial services industry that ended up on the wrong side of the mortgage mess and were subsequently wiped out. This does very little to bolster consumer confidence.

We certainly don’t expect to see the CEO of a troubled institution appearing on his firm’s homepage saying, “In light of recent market volatility, I regret to inform you that we are in BIG trouble, we will most likely be bought out, and, as of this time, we are not quite sure how this will effect you or your money.” That said, the speed with which these major firms are folding is enough to make consumers wonder whether their bank will be there tomorrow. It certainly makes us think twice about whether we should trust all of the reassuring messages we’re seeing on these homepages. That doesn’t mean firms shouldn’t tell their side of the story to consumers and speak in positive terms when merited. However, they should be prepared to be met with some real skepticism.