Actually, the sensible response is to get in on the marketplace used by the 1%. Luxury goods are selling like hotcakes, both in the West and to the new elite in China.

• Leica never had it so good, they're selling as many $10,000 M9 cameras as they can put together. And all the decent museum-quality antique cameras have moved from the U.S. to the Far East.

• Oprah's $38,000 handbag incident should set everybody back on their heels. Not really because of the suspected racism, but just the fact that there is a handbag that costs that much.

• Luxury car brands, innumerable. Not to mention antique Ferraris and the like that are going for millions.

• Even Apple with its new bifurcated phone market, where the 1% will buy the new 5S and the rest of us will buy the plastic 5C. Or whatever their names turn out to be. Apple has already differentiated itself from the generic PC marketplace by charging 4x of what you can get in a regular PC, and you can already tell somebody's economic status by whether they have an iPhone or a Droid--again with a 4x or so price differential. Now they are going to peel off the really high end...

• Clothes, obviously.