Dow could fall 5,000 points and still not be ‘cheap'

And the picture looks even worse when you also add in those companies' soaring debts. According to the Federal Reserve, nonfinancial corporations have increased their total debts since 2007 from $6.3 trillion to over $8 trillion. As FactSet says, total shares plus total debts -- the so-called "enterprise value" -- of U.S. public companies are now 2.4 times annual per-share revenue, compared with an average of 2.1 times since 2001.