Buckle your seat belts, folks. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

While you were safely tucked into your bed, no doubt dreaming sweet dreams, the economy was turning into a nightmare.

The overseas markets went into the toilet overnight. The U.S. market is expected to join them when it opens this morning. The futures are already down sharply.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was off 8.7 percent yesterday. The Shanghai Composite index in China dipped 7.2 percent. In India, they actually halted trading for an hour to stop the slide.

All of this stems from fear and loathing that the U.S. economy, our consumer-driven passion for buying things, in so doing driving the world’s economy, may be cooling off. In other words, people stop buying things. Bottom line? Recession. Maybe.

Much of this is tied into the collapse in the U.S. home building and mortgage businesses. Its roots are in the subprime mortgage debacle. A lot of big U.S. banks have lost billions on bad mortgages offered to people who couldn’t make their payments when the amount of the adjustable rate skyrocketed, and the value of their home didn’t keep pace.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch both have announced huge losses – and job cuts – tied to losses in the subprime mortgage crisis.

Not good.

And it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better any time soon.

Advice? Especially if you have your life savings or a 401K tied up in the market? Don’t look. It’s not going to be pretty.