Why Is the Stock Market Plunging?

Bubble, Bubble, Bubble
For some reason, people still cling to the vague hope that...'at least if we wait long enough'... the market always goes up, and "buy and hold" is a great strategy. Let's look at a long-term chart of the S&P 500:

 Does the above chart really look like the US stock market is in store for smooth sailing? Just about everyone except Chicago School economists now recognizes, after the fact, that the United States obviously went through a tech and dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and then a housing bubble a few years later. Is it really so difficult to understand that trillions in government budget deficits over the past few years, coupled with unprecedented inflation by the central bank, have set the economy up for yet another crash?

No matter how many pundits and famous economists declare otherwise, Bernanke did not save the day with his interventions. He has simply postponed the day of reckoning yet again, and we can expect the final crisis to be much worse than the mere collapse of a few major investment banks. (The short documentary Overdose makes the case in a chilling fashion. If you really want to know see it here )