We’ve been seeing it coming.  All of the mortgage issues have compounded to where we don’t know what company is going to have problems next.  One of the political candidates finally admitted what the rest of us has known for awhile, our economy is in trouble.  But this isn’t really a political post.  McCain is just clueless, buffered from reality by his wife’s millions and 7 houses.  Oh yea, and surrounded by liars.

 I had a meeting last week with someone that was supposed to help me sort out my 401(k) and where I should have my money going.  I’ve been watching the balance do some odd things lately, it increases some with my contribution and my employer match, but I’m losing money.  The investment “professional” said I should keep my contributions going where they are.  That eventually I’d end up making up for the money I’m losing.  I hope so.  When I get a -6% interest rate, I start to worry. 

I also had a bit of a conversation with him about what has been going on.  I don’t remember all he said at this point, but he and I disagreed on many things including how long it was going to take for our economy to recover.  His feeling was that the mortgage mess is happening mostly because of greed.  I agree with that statement.  People were being too greedy, they weren’t thinking about how well they could afford the payments on their houses. 

However, not only were “normal” people being greedy, the companies and their CEO’s were being greedy.  How many of these bankrupt companies are paying their CEO’s multi-million dollar severance packages, or “golden parachutes”?  Yet they don’t have enough to stay in business.  The millions they’re paying their CEO’s would go a long way toward helping them get back on their feet.  Hmm…

 Then Bush wants to give Wall Street $700 billion with no strings attached, to “help” them to straighten things out.  Yea, I don’t see that giving them $700 billion with no strings attached is going to do much more than get us deeper in trouble.  I see the CEO’s with bigger golden parachutes, and more companies going bankrupt.  We need to make sure that the Democrats in congress actually have some say over what the money is going for.  We need strings attached.  We need to know that the money that is supposed to help straighten out the mess, is actually going to go to straighten out the mess. 

For the rest, well…. I see another 3 years of problems, but I may be wrong there.  I guess it depends on how the markets react to this newest bailout scheme.