Friday’s S&P range was the sixth lowest in the last two years, in case you’re keeping track. Of course, it must have seemed even duller to market watchers who have been patiently awaiting an October crash. And not without good reason. Stocks may have shrugged off Katrina and Rita, and even the prospect of Fannie Mae’s directors being hauled into court, but there are a few wall-of-worry items that have moved beyond the nail-biting stage and now threaten to throttle our high-octane, borrow-to-consume economy.

For starters, there is the doubling of minimum monthly payments on most credit card balances. This came about as a result of the new bankruptcy law, and most creditors have already implemented the change. On a $5,000 balance, that would boost monthly payments to $200 from $100. That might not sound like much, but when you multiply it by millions of accounts, it adds up. And unlike the $200 billion the U.S. reportedly will spend to repair hurricane damage, the charge-card payments will come out of consumers’ pockets rather than from the fiscal money tree.

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Even more burdensome still are fuel costs that are already in the stratosphere and threatening to go higher. While some of us have adjusted, more or less, to the pain of $3.00 gas, there could be far more pain when winter heating bills start arriving in the mail. Natural gas, which is used to heat three quarters of the homes in this country, is trading above $14 even though autumn has barely begun. The local newspaper has been warning almost daily that Denver-area homeowners who want to stay warm this winter had better be prepared to pay for it. And even those who opt to freeze in their own living rooms could face monthly bills exceeding last winter’s average by 70% or more.

Where will the money come from? Surely not from our piggy banks, since household savings growth has been wallowing near the zero line. The answer, quite simply, is that the higher costs will come out of discretionary income. And that means it will be directly subtractive from the retailer’s share of GDP -- a prospect that Wall Street should not be shrugging off so blithely. My advice is to tune out the hubris and trust your own good judgment. The economy is headed for a precipitous fall, and stocks are going down with it.