Stock markets have continued to fall after the collapse of several investment banks and despite the rescue package approved by the Congress. Now, there are fears that the world economy could slide into a depression.
How concerned are you about the financial crisis?
Do you fear for your investments? Your retirement funds? Could you lose your job over this?
It dominates all my thinking about the present and future. I believe it's one minute to midnight and we're about out of time. It appears to be beyond saving, but maybe it shouldn't BE saved.
new world order. Good things about going bust; maybe we'll follow a model of less military interventionism. Let people organize & fight their own battles. Finally crush big oil by voting our $$$'s on non-oil energy plans & programs. Get to know our neighbors better because when one fails we all fail. Many more possibilities but I fear as you do the economic nuke might be the warning to a real nuke going off. The world is totally out of balance with no equilibrium; maybe the three gourges dam has knocked us off our wobbly spin!
Why, yes I am concerned. Not about the investments which I don't have but about being stuck in a low-paying retail job after graduating from a prestigious school with a degree in architecture. Like the person who commented before me, I do take some blame (should have networked with the right people at school??)- but it most definitely is not all my fault. With the building industry going slower and slower as it is moving into 2009, I am at the point of losing all hope.
The democrats have defended and taken us down with Fannie Mae I do wish this was common knowledge. The democrats use acorn to win elections this is vote fraud and I would like to see prosecutions for both. This is not good enough the word must get out this is crucial as the democrats have stopped allowing the USA to make money on oil and to save our own country with the tax revenues. I wish the word could get out all over TV radio and the internet
Is this change we can believe in or more of the same that has brought us to the brink of disaster?
Maybe I'm one of the few, but I'm in this for the long haul. What good would worrying about my investments do? I still have approximately 20 years until retirement and even than with luck, another 15-20 years after that. I haven't changed my investment plans at all. I utilize dollar cost averaging, putting in fixed amounts into my mutual funds (mixed between bonds, growth & index funds - domestic and Int'l) and my money market accts each month. The price of funds going down just means I can buy more shares of those funds. I bought a home 15 years ago, one that I could afford and have no credit card debts aside from that charged each month, and payed off each month. On the subject of those who are retired now, I ask just how long is your money supposed to last? If you remove it all from investments where are you putting it? If your retirement is to last for 20 years do you honestly think this 'crisis' will last that long? Of course not. If you are retired now, if you were smart, you should have most of your moneys in bonds and other less volatile funds anyway. I'm sorry for the impact that this is having on so many others, but at the same time I'm glad. Maybe some people will actually try to live within their means and not purchase everything on credit... credit they don't have and purchases they'll never pay off. I also look forward to now having a whole new generation of kids and young adults who will learn what it means to be fiscally responsible. My parents lived through the depression, we'll live thru this.
There is a new paradigm for all and I am a believer of mastering your own destiny. Have you looked into the details of what your funds' composition is? Better do that because as this whole thing keeps unwinding you'll keep deflating based on the underlying assets. I would rather go down of my own volition than sit back and let the masters of our destruction squeeze one more penny out of me. BTW my parents were so poor financially and so isolated geographically they missed the depression because they had to produce everything for themselves (all 12 in one family & sibilings only in the other as the father abandonned his family when his wife, their mother died).
Investments? WHAT INVESTMENTS?! Retirement funds? WHAT RETIREMENT FUNDS?! My job? Well, maybe.... I'm damn sick and tired of how financial issues get discussed in this country. Clearly, most of you people live in a fantasy world where everyone makes 50, 60, 70, 80 grand and more a year and has hundreds of thousands in investments and retirement accounts. I was 41 years old before I got a job that actually offered a 401K and I still make far too little (23,500.00 a year, to be exact) to have enough left over to put into savings of any kind. I doubt I'll ever be able to retire so this sort of talk means nothing to me. And it's not for lack of trying, people, I don't CHOOSE to live like this, it just so happens that this is how my life turned out and I refuse to take all the blame. Some blame, certainly, and probably the most important parts of the blame, but there are millions of people in my exact same situation, earning subsistence wages, and I am one of the LUCKY ones. The biggest concern I have is losing my job because as bad as my job is, it's still better than most here in Dayton, OH. What am I going to do, relocate? How? Who's going to help me afford it? Go back to school at 47? Are you insane?? Now, if someone out there wants to give me some free high quality training of some kind I'd be glad to do it, but I seriously doubt that earning some two-bit Associates degree at the age of 50 is going to help me all that much. By that time, we could all be living on the street. Anyway, most of our decent mid-range jobs will be gone. I will tell you people ONE THING, however, if you think I'm going to give up and accept some horrible retail job at Wal-Mart or do something else just as demeaning and under-paid then, well, lets just say that a peasants life is not worth living. If it gbets much worse I say there is only ONE sane reaction - REVOLUTION!!!!! Now, I'm sort of being facetious, but when I really sit down and think about it I can't see any other way. We are in very dire straits here, people, and this current financial crisis is just the tip of the iceberg.
These so-called bailouts are merely smoke and mirrors. It is indisputable that a paper or fiat economic system cannot exist without failing over time. Such systems depend on public confidence for the system to survive. All the world governments are engaged in a massive propaganda effort to try and maintain the public confidence. However, the planned "solutions" will only worsen the current crisis. We must evolve our mindset of thinking for only ourselves into a higher thought process that is inclusive of humanity as a whole. A valid global economic model can only be successful if the model is based on the precept that humanity is the lowest common denominator. Meaning, when personal, corporate, political, or religious business interests are placed above the well-being of humanity, the outcome of such a model will be less than desirable. It is not even a question whether or not a misdirected economic model will fail. To date, every model that has ever been tried has failed. This dilemma is clearly the result of pursuing egoistically driven business models that do not align with advancing the entire human condition as the moral imperative that should serve as the foundation for the model. While looking for some different perspectives on the current global crisis, I found this interesting site:
Absolutely, I am very concerned. My 401K has taken such a beating, at 50yrs old, I can't predict anymore when I can retire. And now that the cycle of salary growth has stopped with no more raises, my contributions have flat lined while my 401K investments are tanking. I can't even begin to think what would happen if I lose my job and have to find another job, that pays less AND contributes less to the 40K plan.
09/19/2008 6:12:01 PM
