And keep in mind that a significant amount of this worry from well-off investors has to do with the fact that ordinary people will pay less for gas and food. production out of business by making it less profitable. There’s even reason to believe that Saudi Arabia has refused to turn off the oil spigot to support prices because it wants to put U.S. shale oil production (thanks to fracking and other extraction tools). Increased supply tells part of this tale, from a bumper crop in corn and soybeans to higher U.S. But markets also fear low inflation, partly due to crashing commodity prices. Geopolitical tensions, from ISIS to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, shoulder part of the blame. More important, interest rates have plummeted. Markets have unquestionably slumped: the S&P 500 is down 8 percent just since mid-September. Sadly, the primary way to change that has been, catastrophically, shut off by the blinkered stubbornness of our policymakers. And it points to a core problem that has really been with us for over a decade, but more acutely since the Great Recession: Countries cannot generate enough demand in the economy without a financial bubble of some sort.

A tumultuous drop in oil prices and a significant stock market pullback underlie serious challenges for the global economy. You usually think about October surprises in the political context, but we’ve had something of an economic October surprise this year.

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