The Party's Over

As most of you already know, the Dow Jones Average fell over 400 points today. At one point it appeared to be in a free fall.

Was this simply what market analysts like to call a "correction?" Or is it Black Tuesday? There are a couple indications that it's probably the latter.

The MarketWatch article cites "Concerns about the sub-prime lending market" as one of the factors that caused today's rapid descent. That's financialese for lending large amounts of money to anything with a pulse, a practice which fueled the housing boom during its glory days and which anybody marginally smarter than a brick knew would lead to disaster. Now it's come back to haunt us.

Even more troubling, however, are "Concerns that tighter credit conditions in China and Japan might dampen global growth," which means this country's credit-card binge might be over.

So is this the end? Does it mean we will no longer be able to pay for two or three wars, expand the size of the war machine, and simultaneously give gigantic tax breaks to any billionaire who doesn't feel like ponying up? And here we thought we could borrow Oriental money endlessly, and keep the party going forever. After all, that debt figure isn't real money, it's just a number on a piece of paper.

Leveler heads have seen this coming for a long time. And you'll have fun, fun, fun 'till your daddy takes the T-Bird (and your credit card) away.