Fortunately, metaphors are cheap.

So the economy is tanking, and today Wall Street reacted by jamming its collective fingers in their collective ears, singing 'lalalala' and buying and selling at random. But this is normal. What's different from normal is that the economic punditry - Henny Pennys all - acknowledged that it was happening.

I work in a building almost entirely dedicated to banking. The elevators are equipped with televisions - usually glued to CNBC. Today, after the collective Bear Sterns groan, the powers-that-be changed the channel to ESPN, tore the knob off and watched blissfully as Dick Vitale popped a vein. And I was glad. Watching the Dow plummet, whilst riding down from the 45th floor makes for too strong a picture for me.

Fortunately, I personally won't have to cut back on anything. Due to school debt, I'm already doing it.

[Related - Pedro the one-eyed homeless guy is here. He's changed up his schtick. He's actually going out of his way to make folks who can't give him change feel better because of the economy. He even sounds like he means it. Now that's knowing your market.]