Across Manhattan there are many observers--including Bear Stearns senior officers who are in dire straits from borrowing money on the shares they never sold and face financial ruin.
Consumers have held up fairly well, but with stagnating wages and rising costs, their capacity to bear the grunt will wear out, and that could have dire consequences for the already fragile economic recovery.
Yet the consequences of unrestricted consumption, which Americans must indirectly bear through the increasingly unbearable burden of Type II diabetes, will become increasingly dire if left unchecked.