Do the Banks or the Stock Market Go First?

Banks, apparently, though it might do me well to brush up on the 1929 crash and subsequent depression.

Washington Mutual becomes biggest bank to fail in US history.

Is it too early to run around screaming, "the Great Depression, v. 2.0?" Or too early to start running around screaming at all? Appropriate times for running around like a beheaded chicken and shrieking "bloody murder" aside, this is history in the making. My. We live in interesting times indeed.

I feel a strange urge to write a high fantasy story set in post-apocalyptic America: the economy of 21st century United States has collapsed, and people are papering their walls in hundred dollar bills. The idea is hideously under-formed: I'm imagining a return to the fashions of the '20s - contrasting the modern technology no one can no longer use - cities abandoned and closing in on themselves, communities growing up around the ruined townhouses people have taken for themselves and turned into dwellings that resemble the Hooverville. The heroine and her parents wander America in a Mercedes Benz that runs on corn oil (courtesy of the mad genius mechanic kid that lived in the house beside theirs, before they had to flee in the middle of the night to avoid a messy eviction) until some misfortune obliges them to sojourn with a community of odd and eccentric individuals (of course, x3 Conventions of fantasy, no?). And because the atmosphere of gothic horror has become a fixation of mine, gothic horror, in all it burlesqued glory, shall make its appearance, =D

Maybe I'll write that as my NaNoWriMo practice, just as Beautiful Agora was practice for my 2006 NaNo. It would give me a reason to pay closer attention to current events - and stop mangling my poor NaNo idea with overcomplicated ideas, x3

Quick Update the First: Trip to Germany didn't go through. Perhaps next year.
Quick Update the Second: I want to slap Eragon. So. Very. Much. I'd slap him a second time for good measure. A third time, just to make sure. And then a fourth, because backhanding fictional characters is good for the soul.