Here’s the gut-wrenching line from the Joe Nocera business column in today’s NYT:

“Are you ready to face a world in which your two biggest assets, your retirement account and your home, don’t automatically go up?”

As he points, there was a time a generation ago when Americans didn’t need the stock market or home appreciation to live well. “Now we do.”

The economy runs on spending, and borrowing against those assets, to spend more than we make (I use the “we” figuratively, btw) and keep those assets humming along.

We may be on the threshold of a massive, countrywide cold turkey withdrawal from the addiction of shopping.