Required reading: Bloomberg foresees the collapse

Nothing heralds the decline of an empire quite like the construction of an expensive new headquarters. Louis XIV built Versailles after his power had peaked, and before much of Europe united against him. Park Avenue's Pan-Am Building went up not so many years before the iconic company went under. Enron was still completing its postmodern skyscraper in Houston when it filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

All of which brings us to the N.Y. Yankees and their $1.5 billion-plus stadium, baseball's monument to America's precrash hubris...

Not pretty.