Hard Times:Survival Guide

By Colleen McVey

I spent the first two days of this week sick in bed with body aches, fever, and fatigue. Finally, on Wednesday I felt much better--until I got my 401 K update in the mail. Then, I got sick to my stomach. Once again, our 401K took a hit.  No 48 hours of bed rest and lots of liquids will make this sick feeling go away. I'm trying to be optimistic. I really want to believe Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, who told lawmakers on Tuesday that the recession might end by the end of this year. Of course, that's IF the Fed and the Obama Administration can get the credit and financial markets to return to some sort of normalcy. Not only is that a BIG IF, but the end of the year is still a long way off. I'm hoping my friends and family, who are struggling, can hang onto their jobs until then and beyond. Times are tough and frightening for just about everyone I talk to. At a time when we need to stimulate the economy by spending money, many people are holding back out of fear. Let's hope the federal stimulus money does what it is supposed to do; jump start the economy, get people back to work, and restore some consumer confidence. Help is on the way - I hope it is enough.

In the meantime, starting Sunday, News 12 and Newsday will bring you a special survival guide focusing on how and where to get help. Everyday there will be a survival guide story in the newspaper, then a special report on News 12 that night, and a live Long Island Talks on the issue of the day. The series will include  a a live 2 hour town meeting at 7 pm on Thursday, March 5th. If you need some help, I hope you'll join us.

Comments

[John]

Unfortunately, what you're calling optimism is blind faith in politicians who have made it abundantly clear that they don't care about us as long as the big banks are safe.

What's worse, you're joining them in blaming us, the consumers, for the failures! Even if we start spending, what will that help? The money will go right out of the country, because we don't MAKE anything in this country. That's also why there are no jobs.

(It would be interesting to calculate the GDP in the last fifty years, minus the financial sector that exists purely to siphon money out of the system every time it changes hands.)

We need to get RID of the credit and financial markets, not save them. They're pyramid schemes, to put it in simple terms. Your 401(k) only rises when an ever-increasing number of investors enter the stock market. Stocks are no better or worse an investment than, say, Beanie Babies, except that the government hasn't spent the last thirty years tricking you into believing that stocks were intrinsically valuable.