The Dow has lost almost 300 points in two weeks, after a monster rally all spring and summer. Now what?

Caution ahead. The jobless rate will remain uncomfortably high. Regional banks are failing. The big banks are reeling in credit. Businesses are coping with a new normal that means less credit for them to expand and hire. What should you be doing right now?

If you have your job: keep investing in your 401 (k), especially if you have a company match. Keep investing in the 529 for college. Concentrate on your job and doing well there. If you don’t have a job, expect an extension of unemployment benefits and remember that so many people are out of work, the stigma is vanishing. In short, we are living in historic times and the only thing certain is uncertainty.

Alan Greenspan, the former fed chief who presided over a historic period of stock market prosperity, says “we are in a recovery.” On ABC’s This Week, he said this quarter the economy could well grow 3 percent. That is a dramatic improvement from two years of treacherous recession. But the jobless rate will surpass 10 percent and could linger there before finally coming back down. His great concern is the 5.4 million Americans out of work for longer than 6 months. He worries the broader economy will suffer with so much idle talent.

The longer people are out of work, they can lose their skills or not keep up with new skills on the job. “What makes an economy great is a combination of the capital assets of the economy and the people who run it,” Greenspan said. ”And if you erode the human skills that are involved there, there is a real and in one sense an irretrievable loss.” For months we have been focused on the kitchen table tragedies of job loss. But the Maestro gives us something new and potentially troubling to think about.