That's what the New York Post suggests. Why? Because the only reason the Dow hit 14,164.53 on Oct. 9 was the fact that Dow financial members Citigroup and GE and the rest of the market were pumped up on subprime steroids. HT: Big Picture.

Critics of credit reporting agencies and Wall Street analysts say their failure earlier this year to properly warn investors about the possible extend of the subprime mortgage meltdown tainted the 14,164.53 record high of the Dow Jones industrial average.

Therefore, the critics say, the record high hit on Oct. 9 should carry a Barry Bonds-like asterisk - because it was reached unfairly.

"These were phantom Dow highs in that they were predicated on unrealistically low expectations of risk in the housing market," Christian Stracke, a senior strategist at CreditSights in London, told The Post last week.

"It was a fool's rally and a fool's record Dow high in October," snapped Chris Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics. "This whole thing was built on colossal and very deliberate deception of investors with opaque products like CDOs."