This morning, the stock market is once again plummeting at the open, (ho hum, what else is new?) on the belief that we're headed for a deep, global recession. In fact, the U.S. markets' weakness is only the latest in a string of major declines that began with a steep drop in the Japanese market, followed by declines across Asia and Europe. In short, the markets look uglier than Popeye's nemesis, the Sea Hag.
Official economic data (is there any other kind? does anyone do this stuff "unofficially," as a hobby?) now indicates that England and the Euro zone have already entered recession.
Clearly, this shapes up as an ugly day in the markets. Then again, at IcebergCarwash, at least we can say that we went on record as believing that we had not yet reached bottom.
The real story here, in my opinion, is that the breathless media, and the "experts" who supply them with quotes, have really outdone themselves this time in describing things.
Headlines featured the words "meltdown," "gloom" and "precipitous." One person was quoted as saying something like "we'll be talking about the next few days for generations."
But this quote, from Bank of England Deputy Governor Charles Bean, takes the cake:
"This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history."
(Of course, he mentions "human history" because most economists believe that the current crisis is expected to fall short of the Cretaceous-era stock market meltdown, which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. In retrospect, that crisis was somewhat predictable, given that dinosaurs had enormous bodies, but tiny brains. Wait a second. I've just described two-thirds of the people who currently work at the investment banks' trading desks. Never mind).
Why didn't he just throw in one of those "The end of the world is nigh" proclamations while he was at it?
Speaking of the end of the world, this is not how I envisioned it at all. There are dozens of crazy end-of-the-world cults out there, and as far as I know, not a single one said anything about the credit crisis and economic recession. No one.
Here are some of the more popular predicted causes of the end of the world:
* Asteroids/Comets
* UFOs (some of which would attack the Earth, while others would whisk the "righteous" away to safety).
* Locusts
* Computer-related
* Evil robots
* Angry deity
* Angry diety ("I'll kill everyone in sight if you don't give me that cupcake, NOW!)
* Arrival of the messiah, who forgets to unplug the iron before going out
There's nothing in there about a global recession. Not a word. We've never heard about a cult of Wall Streeters holed up in a compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, armed to the teeth with Bloomberg terminals. (Actually, there was that Martin Frankel guy, but that was different).
So, I guess this is it. The end of the world. And it didn't even involve the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.
You'd have to think that right about now, in some remote, fortified outpost in Texas or Montana, there's a guy named Jebediah stomping around with a shotgun, looking at his watch every few seconds, and yelling, "Darn it, that spaceship was supposed to be here at least ten minutes ago!" while trying to figure out which one of his 11 wives to blame for the entire situation.
Update: It now appears as though the market has stabilized a bit, although it's still down over 4% on the day so far.
Put the gun down, Jebediah. And get back inside. You know how that cold weather makes your tooth hurt.
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