Stock prices around the world took a nosedive on Monday, January 4, 2016 – the first trading day of the year – signaling an ominous possible confirmation of what many experts have been predicting: that this will be the year when the global economy plunges into a complete freefall.

After years of surviving on artificial life support (read quantitative easing) while debt has continued to spiral in nearly every country, the global economy's demise may be imminent – despite the recent rosy forecasts from mainstream media pundits who have been cheerleading the alleged recovery in the United States and elsewhere.

The day's trading troubles started when the Shanghai Composite Index dropped 6.9 percent overnight to a three-month low of 3,296.66. This prompted the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets to stop trading for the rest of the day, marking the first time China has implemented its new "circuit breaker" mechanism – a measure designed to mitigate the kind of panic selling that was beginning to occur in the country's stock markets on Monday.