It's only noon, and already the Dow has dropped by 325 241 336 points. Terror. Panic. Uncertainty. Fear. Should you dump all of your stocks and stash the cash while you still can? No. No. No!

One good (bad? Who knows, really?) consequence of the impending re-collapse of the world's financial markets: gold prices have risen so high—$1,715 per ounce, at the moment—that gold is now virtually the same price as platinum. A wee bit more expensive, even! All rappers will now be required to trade in their platinum chains for gold ones. Wearing a platinum chain is now as wack as wearing a silver chain was, last week.

You may be resting in your dorm room, listening to your Beatles and smoking your "bong" pipe and composing your protest march folk song without a care in the world, secure in the knowledge that college degrees are kind of worth the money, more or less. But are they? Well, maybe not for you, hippie.

For those who thought that today's noontime stock market malaise could have reversed itself with an afternoon rally: the Dow just closed down 512 points on the day. That's well over 4% of its total value. It also means all of the gains for this year have been erased. And it ranks as the ninth largest single day points loss in history.

The day's not even halfway over, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has already dropped more than 300 fucking points, close to 3% of its value. The Nasdaq is down more than 3% as well. What's the problem? Fear of a looming double-dip recession. (What's "looming" is the second dip.) Haha, have you been missing 2009? Perhaps we'll get to live it all over again!

America! What is wrong with you? Despite the fact that Wal-Mart is the only store of any size left in your post-apocalyptic economically decimated little towns, Wal-Mart's sales have been falling for two years now. Important update: it's getting worse!

Perhaps you've been congratulating yourself on having less than $200,000 in student loan debt, telling yourself your own student loans aren't so bad. Well, stop that! The 2010s are the decade of "Feeling Bad About Your Student Loans."

What our fragile economy needs is a white-hot IPO of a famous but mundane consumer food brand! Well it is our lucky day, fellow unfortunate members of the US economy: mediocre donuts are here to save us—again!

Whoa, this whole "debt ceiling" thing sure is scary, right? Can you imagine a national default? All together now, American paupers: "Yes, we can fucking imagine it. Welcome to the club, rest of America."

Who are the real losers of this recession, besides "all of humanity in general?" We don't want to spoil it for you, but... not white people! Whew. From the NYT:

Whew! Sure is poor out there today! (How poor is it?) I tell ya, it's poor!

America is little more than prairie riddled with chain stores and fast food restaurants, so when a big national store it's bankrupt, it's a bit like losing a vapid but beloved family member. We just lost Borders. Is Quiznos next?

What with all the headlines about financial markets behaving like drunk girls, it seems appropriate to update you on the very latest state of the global econometric system. To wit:

Confused about the future of our economy? It's all very simple, really:

If we as a nation were to answer the question, "What are your two biggest problems?" the response would be "We are fat and broke." Well, you can't have it all, America. But you can be broke and skinnier!

The good news: the chief financial officers at America's 500 largest companies saw their pay increase by nearly 20% last year, to an average of almost $3 million. That's a recovery we can all get behind. Here's to you, gents.

The US Department of Education has a handy new website that allows you to easily compare the prices of all types of colleges in America. Its real purpose is to keep us up-to-date on who to make fun of.

You think the owner of that book store doesn't know what you're doing? Oh, they know exactly what you're doing. You say you "love" books? You say you enjoy perusing the soothing aisles of a book store, so lovingly curated by a book store owner who spends his or her life ensuring that the very latest and most interesting book selections are there, presented for you in the most interesting possible way? You like that a lot? Yeah. So you can go home and order that shit online. Fuckers.

Are taxes in America too low, or too high? That's a trick question, of course. The taxes on the rich are always too low but too high for the rich, but the rich don't actually pay taxes, so it all turns very epistemological.

An important part of being a successful American citizen these days is tempering your expectations. Calmness. Deep breaths. Freedom from all forms of desire. So when you hear, for example, that your economically devastated city won't see a return to pre-recession employment levels for another decade, you'll be able to take that news with poise, rather than with a stroke.