Spontaneous Combustion

I don't think the stock market is a proper indicator in this day and age of the relative health of the economy. It has little connection to working people, who own precious little stock, and the connection between productivity and wages has been severed, and anyway stock prices rise and fall on expectation instead of fundamentals anymore. But when the Dow has its largest drop since 9-11, when Alan Greenspan says things like "we're headed for a recession," when sales of durable goods drop almost 8% in a month, when the tanking of the Asian markets affects OUR OWN instead of vice-versa, then you have a combustible mix where the investor economy follows the working class economy, right into the gutter.

It's one day, and I hope it isn't a trend. But it bears scrutiny. Not everybody gets help during a boom, but everybody gets hurt in a recession.