Global markets welcomed the new year in an almost comically dismal fashion. It was the worst five-day start to a year for U.S. markets since 1928 and the most awful ever on record for the Dow. American shares wiped out almost $2 trillion in value, as fears of a slowdown in China and plummeting oil prices spooked investors.

It was even gorier in China, the source of the bleeding. Chinese stocks fell off a cliff, dropping 12 percent, a sell-off so steep that it tripped the system’s circuit breakers and halted trading twice in one week. China’s moves to dress the wounds—abandoning the circuit-break system, directing state-controlled funds to buy stocks, setting a higher yuan reference rate—did little to stop the gushing in markets over in the U.S. Neither did a better-than-expected picture of the American employment market put out by the Labor Department on Friday.

This start to 2016 comes off the worst year for markets since 2008. Hedge funds lost an average of nearly 4 percent in 2015, according to estimates from hedge-fund research firm HFR Inc, as even top fund managers had their most terrible years in history. Billionaire financier George Soros, speaking at an economic forum last week, told an audience that what’s going on in China amounts to a crisis.

“When I look at the financial markets there is a serious challenge which reminds me of the crisis we had in 2008,” he said.

The global economy may be beginning to show signs of circling the same 2008 drain. And much as they did in the years leading up to the financial crash, people are still recklessly spending themselves into oblivion while the drain could be slowly sucking them in.

Last week alone brought the kind of 2006 excess that writers and filmmakers now love to cite as the “it’s no wonder the bottom fell out” moment. An Hermès Birkin bag sold for $99,750 on an online consignment marketplace just shortly after it was listed (well below the record price paid for the cult-like status symbol, set this summer at a cool $221,844). Manhattan apartment prices surged to a new record, with the median price for condos and co-ops hitting a new high of $1.15 million. The price per square foot also reached a record level at $1,645, according to a report from Douglas Elliman. A Williamsburg establishment started selling a $100 edible 24-karat-gold-covered doughnut dunked in Cristal-infused icing. It’s $1,000 for a dozen and it’s not even in Manhattan.

Even as he was about to be indicted with federal charges of securities fraud, pharma bro Markin Shkreli has no trouble spending. A onetime suitor of the embattled wannabe rapper outed him for reportedly spending $120 on a cup of tea while on their Tinder date. Shkreli, whose assets are now frozen, didn’t back away from the exorbitant purchase (though, the man who raised the price of vital drug by 5,500 percent overnight earlier this fall, shelled out $2 million for the single-copy Wu-Tang Clan album, and flagrantly boasted about his ability to spend millions bailing out rappers and hiring producers to create his own album isn’t exactly known for his subtlety). In fact, he defended the purchase in one of the many live-streams he hosts from his apartment. When asked about the extravagance, he justified the purchase this way: “At a restaurant, you get four to five glasses in a bottle of wine. If you get a $500 bottle of wine, which is, like, mid-range, then each glass is $125.”

There you have it. We’re now in a period in which markets are parachuting to their lowest levels in nearly nine decades while a 32-year-old facing decades in jail on financial crimes refers to $500 bottles of wine as reasonably priced. At least this time around, we’ll get a front-row look at how this spiral started, live-streamed into our living rooms.