These people usually have a cozy job, a nanny, a cleaning lady and rich parents. We have neither at this point. The Dow dropped below 12,000 today amid bearish forecasts. This is why we laughed at the fiduciary conflicted pundit who predicted the DOW to hit 20,000 during the next year or so. The job market is beyond lousy, and actually appears to be getting worse rather better. The real estate market is beyond dead-you likely know this if you have had a house on the market forever. As a double whammy, you are also likely paying property taxes on the inflated value assessed before the bubble burst and you lost 30% or so of your equity value.Even if people are buying established homes, very few new ones are being built, which is killing the livelihood of many types of tradesmen. Don't be fooled by people looking to blow smoke up your butt to get someone re-elected, or to inflate stock prices just before they sell everything and pull out their Golden Parachute. We are seeing small restaurants close their doors at an unbelievably obscene pace because eating out is a luxury many can not afford these days. Ironically, if you have to invest-invest in gold or tequila.
Gold is being horded by those who have the means to purchase it, and liquor sales are up over 10% because the people who can't afford the gold and are unemployed have to find some way not to jump off the Bay Bridge in despair {this is not really even a joke-suicide rates are also up along with inflation}. Just going to get groceries at the store now costs about 5-8% more for the same items as compared with last year. This also has the devastating effect of putting some grocery chains out of business {like Superfresh in Maryland} because people are relying more on the Kosko/Sam's Club bulk vendors. We aren't ashamed to admit that the economy has almost killed us. Even attorneys are having trouble starting out because there are fewer companies to sue, the ones that exist dont have very deep pockets and people are not getting divorced because they just cant afford parting ways and going it alone. There certainly will be no airplane trips in the near future like last year at this time.
Seriously, it is that bad out there right now-especially when you aren't 27 anymore. This is why we tend to get far beyond upset when our current president is always touring Hawaii, London, France, and we believe he is going to slum it up next in sunny Puerto Rico. You know there will be golf courses and black tie dinners involved. At least George W., despite several disappointing faults, wore casual clothes, stayed in Texas obsessively clearing brush and ate BBQ food most times. America fought for it's independence to get away from monarch rulers who had to have the silver spoon treatment every day. If only one dollar would be donated to our public schools for every three donated to political campaigns we would have kids that could properly read and write again.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/10/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm?iid=Lead