Reader poll: Which pundit best summed up the stock market slide?

The pundits were out in force today as they described the big drop in the stock market. Which quote was your favorite?

“Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America,” Barack Obama said. “No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country.”

“Any company with an IPO planned for this week will probably pull it,” said Dow Jones Investment Banking deputy managing editor John Morris.

“The market will calm down at some point, at which point Zynga will be able to get out,” said Lou Kerner, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “More speculative deals, with less proven business models, are more at risk.”

“The economic recovery is not as strong as investors had initially thought,” said Daniel Morgan, portfolio manager with Synovus Securities.

“Generally, enterprise and tech companies have fared better in downturns,” said Andrew Bartels at Forrester Research.

“If we look at Apple’s performance in 2008 to 2009, it held up well even during a recession,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner.

“It’s gonna make it a lot tougher for other firms to try and launch things,” said Kachan & Co. managing partner Dallas Kachan.

“The U.S. just dropped a notch,” said Tim Draper, managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

“For Silicon Valley, a slump in the public stock markets is often the best time to invest in startups. And don’t forget, what goes down will come back up,” said Trip Hawkins, chief executive of mobile and social game firm Digital Chocolate.

These quotes were collected by the VentureBeat staff (and we listened to Obama’s talk on TV).