A Plethora of Black Swans

The origins of the term black swan go back to the ancient Western belief that "all swans are white". In that context, a "black swan" was a metaphor for something that could not exist. The 17th Century discovery of black swans in Australia metamorphosed the term to connote a perceived impossibility that actually can come to pass. That said, we at The Angry Trader have decided to compile a list of the black swans that have materialized from the ether of the current economic and political shit show:

1. Dow 8,000. Two weeks ago, Dow 10,000 was considered an overly aggressive Bear target.
2. S&P below 1,000. Ditto.
3. First radical Marxist about to win the White House. Barack Hussein Obama is a glib, cocky, arrogant, radical socialist who could not possibly be more unqualified for the Presidency. He has spewed a smokescreen of mellifluous rhetoric over tens of millions of lemmings who think the term "Realpolitik" refers to a brand of shitty Russian vodka.
4. R.I.P: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, WaMu, Wachovia, IndyMac, Countrywide, Dexia, Fortis and, now that the Marxists about about to gain total control over our government, American capitalism.
5. West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil below $80. Congrats to all you tree-hugging hippies that paid-up to buy a Toyota Prius. Next time read a fucking book about the laws of supply and demand first.  Hint:  go to the chapter on "elasticity"...
6. Australian Dollar falls 30 big figures in less than three months. For those of you who aren't familiar with FX, a 40% move in a major currency does not happen. It is a 10 standard deviation event, which means it's only supposed to happen once every 10,000 years or so. Let this be a lesson to all of us vis-a-vis what happens when any asset is egregiously overowned.
7. VIX above 70. It only hit 50 right after 9/11, go figure. Apparently subprime loans are scarier than a bunch of fascist rag heads flying planes into the Twin Towers.
8. Media succeeds in convincing large portions of the populace that Bush/Republicans, not Carter/Clinton/Frank/Dodd/Democrats and their idiotic social engineering experiments, are responsible for the collapse in our financial system. I mean, we knew the public was stupid and we certainly knew that the media stopped even pretending to be unbiased decades ago, but this one takes the cake. Well done, media, you have made 2008 the year that journalism officially died.
9. Oliver Stone makes a movie critical of a Republican President. Oh, wait, that doesn't go on the 'Black Swan" list, it goes on the "Things That Could Not Possibly Have Been More Fucking Predictable" list.
10. California goes bankrupt. Oops, that goes on the other list as well...