Black Tuesday 2021?

 Kai Ryssdal frequently reminds us that the stock market is not the economy.

But the stock market has a few times been a Grim Harbinger of its cousin the Grim Reaper.

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In June 25 states discontinued Federal topping up of unemployment benefits.  That was in tandem with the fact that most of those states' benefits were of the most meager sort, or had already gone away.

The reason offered for that economically counter-intuitive act was that the working class are all shiftless bastards and unless you prod them with economic disaster - taking away legitimate benefits - they won't work.

That seemed to work well: at the beginning of September it was announced that job creation was down 67% from what had been expected.

Today, 6 September, Labor Day, the rest of the states lose the Federal top up.

Either today, or already, or soon, the national moratorium on evictions will expire.

Hospitals are near or at the breaking point from Covid 19 admissions; and the number of new cases keeps rising, especially in the freedom loving White Racist Party states.

There are maybe eleven million people without jobs or incomes.

There are maybe eight million - I know I'm doing some double counting, but that really makes this number worse - who will have no home when the moratorium goes away.

I guess that they get to live on the street.

Many of the landlords that will finally be able to evict are either already in or about to be in the financial ditch: they are losing their property because without rent they can't pay the mortgage. That's good news for bottom feeders like Steve Mnuchin, but last time it took a near toppling of the world economy to make a real property situation such that it benefitted Ol' Steve and the Boys.

These are a just a few of the shards strewn upon the concrete floor of impending disaster. 

What might they mean?

Who knows?

But it makes me nervous that they were all available just before a particular perennially jumpy component of our population - Wall Streeters - could take these shards with them as they trekked off to the Hamptons to indulge in their four day Labor Day much deserved end of summer break.

I think it's possible that the Hamptons won't be calming enough to keep the shards from making Wall Street jumpy.

Don't be surprised if tomorrow morning you wake up to hear that the circuit breakers are on after a multi-thousand point drop of the stock market.

Even Ol' Mitch might be rattled.

On Wednesday he will probably propose The Wall Street Relief And Enhancement Bill: a trillion dollars to pay the bonuses of Wallstreeters who will suffer from the drag along disaster created by Black Tuesday.