Most companies that are not publicly laying people off or frozen are still "hiring", but they are extremely selective and conservative in their hiring practices. This is true of all major US markets. It's a decent time to be an established programmer, but it's probably utterly terrible for a 22-year-old CS grad.
For aspiring hedge fund quants, it's bad (bad all around) but not nearly as bad as the financial news would have one think. Talentless, unskilled IBD/M&A kids are toast and will never earn that kind of compensation again, but quants and IT are still in high demand.
I feel very lucky right now - I got an offer after an internship this summer, before everything imploded. Am I glad I did that!
As for my anecdote: there were some rumors that the company I had the offer for wanted to renege on it, but that didn't end up happening. I'm still personally a bit worried, since they didn't knock down my pay, and maybe that puts me on the fast track when the layoffs start happening?
I can't imagine things would be so bad that companies would be eager to layoff interns. You'd have to layoff like 10 interns to equal one reasonably experienced employee.
For aspiring hedge fund quants, it's bad (bad all around) but not nearly as bad as the financial news would have one think. Talentless, unskilled IBD/M&A kids are toast and will never earn that kind of compensation again, but quants and IT are still in high demand.