Global Stock Markets Plunge as Fear of US Recession Grows

Today America is on holiday and it is pretty much assured that the US markets will open sharply lower on Tuesday morning January 22. Whether or not buyers come in later in the day and lift the market higher will be a critical sign, in my view, on whether this will be ugly or really, really ugly. It's important to keep perspective with regards to stock markets: the US market in particular has pretty much gone up unabated over the past 5 years or so, and generally has been sharply up over the last twenty years or so. There have been blocks of time in our nation's young history when the market has been stagnant or dropping for decades at a time. My point is that we very well may be in store for a prolonged, multi, multi-year bear market. Somewhere along the way our culture forgot the meaning of the word 'credit' and literally a generation of people have been spending like drunken sailors on borrowed--not earned, money. It appears that the bill, at long last, may be coming due.