How Low Can It Go?

If you weren’t already a little nervous about where the economy is heading, today should give you plenty of reason to start worrying.

Stock markets in Asia and Europe already are reporting heavy selling over fears about the U.S. economy’s problems. There’s no telling what will happen on Wall Street today as a result, but investors are bracing for the worst. Over at blownmortgage.com, they’ve decided it’s going to be such a rocky ride that they’ll offer $5 to the person who guesses correctly the value of the Dow at the close of business today.

So much for the notion that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expressed last May. He said then that problems with subprime mortgages weren’t likely to spread to the rest of the economy.

Now, it seems, they’re spreading to the rest of the world.