Portfolio manager Axel Merk explains the difference between the tech bust in 2000 and the current credit crisis with USA Today.

Customers leave when trust is lost
It's one thing to have tech stocks crash. Or put a crooked CEO behind bars for fraud. Or kick an unsavory analyst out of the business for hyping stocks. It's quite another to put the entire system at risk, says Axel Merk, president and portfolio manager at Merk Investments. "In the tech-stock bust, the system worked as it was designed," he says. "Checks and balances were in place. You had some business failures, but the financial system did not fail."