>Wonder if this is the beginning of the inevitable free fall?

Probably not.

The fact the economy hasn’t already gone to shit despite Trump leads me to believe that it is way stronger than many think.

I would love to agree.

Complex systems can be stable but close to collapse. Individually within we see stability and presume everything is fine while laughing at preppers. After a crash we can see all the signs that were there, and we retcon stories about crashes.

Complex systems seem to crash suddenly once a point of criticality is teetered over, where causes and effects that feed on each other driving the crash harder (positive feedback is not positive).

We retroactively create stories about dependencies (Archduke Franz Ferdinand).

Watching systems come back up after a shock is also weird (earthquake in my hometown Christchurch was a spectacular example of recovery).

Trying to diagnose how modern financial crises occurred is eye-opening.