Is that the economy I smell burning?

If you haven't had to sharpen a stick to hunt and kill an animal for food, if you haven't had to burn the body of a loved one for heat, if you haven't decided whether your new homeless look will be the classic "trashcan bum" or "30's style w/ disheveled suit and fedora", if you haven't had to steal chickens so you had some tradeable good for the new barter economy, well then, count yourselves among the dozen or so people untouched by the horrific financial apocalypse: worldwide edition. Or maybe you live somewhere warm. Whatever, you can burn a family member for spite then.

In case you haven't looked at a paper, television, news blog, or heard the hushed whispers of "it was a financial sector worker" as EMT's hosed a bloody stain off the sidewalk, the worldwide economy collapsed harder today. All the world markets are down anywhere from 5% to 10%, with the Asian markets in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Shanghai, and Singapore all eating it hard. The DOW immediately dropped 700 points before bouncing back to a not as horrifying 150 point loss. Don't get your hopes up, a half hour before the NYSE closes it'll dive, probably closing at another 500-700 point loss.

But don't worry, our unelected betters are on it. They're going to hold a meeting or something. Hank Paulson is going to continue to sit on the $700 billion that he had piled up in his shed, furiously masturbating to the money mountain. Why should he actually do anything with that money? Look Hank, I thought we went over this yesterday. Go buy equity stakes in these companies, injecting them with capital and providing the American taxpayer with a good level of security for the markets and their $700 billion investment. Economists agree, it's probably the best plan of action and actually qualifies as a good idea. You're authorized to do it. So go fucking do it.

For the rest of us, we sit and wait. Sharpening our pointy sticks to get them kill ready, ranking our friends and family by who we would leave behind for the roving gangs of street cannibals and who we would protect with said spears and fire sticks, and deciding whether we could organize a complete French-style revolution by Monday. Do we wait for the back ordered guillotines or move to rusty cutlasses and heavy crushing stones? Does Dick Cheney deserve disemboweling or must he be eaten alive by crows? Decisions. As we wonder whether our unelected and elected betters will finally decide this is the day to do something, all we are left is to ponder the important political issue of our time: Bill Ayers.