TIM CAVANAUGH: More Scenes from the Economic Hyperpocalypse.

Analyst Charles Nenner says the Dow will be down to 5,000 within 30 months. And Fast Money’s John Melloy reports that nobody’s buying stocks anymore: Equity trading in the slow month of August is the lowest it’s been since 1999. Small investors are bailing on the stock market, and Melloy says many of them will never be back.

Calculated Risk has a roundup of causes for alarm, ranging from home sales to truck tonnage to an inevitable decline in the Case-Shiller housing index.

But strangely, the index has not come down yet: People are actually paying more for their worthless houses. I don’t know what is more dismaying: that the National Association of Realtors brags about how the home buyer tax credit kept house prices rising even while sales were falling, or that Time titles one of its columns “The Curious Capitalist.”

Something’s out of whack.