I lost my job at a local corner restaurant which is going under. my fiancee cant get student loans for next semester and people all around me have lost their 401k savings.
a music career is looking bad to start at the moment too, ha.

I knew I was losing my job in Jan - if a dr can’t make it and closes down - you know things aren’t that great! So I had 6 months to save. Plus the fact that we don’t have any debt (ty the financially fiscal parents!)

I drive a bomb, rent, can always cut out the tv, use a washing line (dryer broke down about 3 years ago), grow my own veggies in containers (as well as a large number of papaya trees), don’t go to the dr (except yearly exam), don’t take meds or vitamins, loan dvd’s from the library, cook “restaurant quality” meals at home and kayak fish.

Well .. I have been doing this for the last 20 yrs! I have only lived in the US for the last 5 yrs (Naples - Florida), before that - was in Australia.

I can move back if things get too bad here .. I have the cash saved for such an emergency. Sure I still have lots of stuff I don’t need or use .. but you can always offload them for something.

If things get really tight - well, that’s the time to get inventive and give people a product that they will really need as opposed to want.

And as for the whole health insurance industry here .. I would definitely not buy stocks in them in a downturn. People won’t be able to afford the ridiculous fees to stay in the plan.

How has it affected me? Not really that much and I am still unemployed (husband still works for a dismal wage.)

And if the US needs a weight loss plan - this may be it! As inflation has gone through the roof in the last 5 years here. When a gallon of milk goes from $1.90 to over $4 in a couple of years (is it pegged with petrol?), people should start to worry. Funnily enough - everyone is pretty quiet about the whole inflation thing.

I remember 17.5% interest on home loans in the late 80’s in Australia, as well as 14% unemployment in Hobart (though I did learn to process fish at Safcol also abalone and crayfish).

But unless the US can provide jobs that pay a living wage (and $8-9 ph is not), then people will really suffer here.

And I am at a total loss as why no one has said anything about changing the foreclosure laws here is beyond me. People in the US can just walk away from their home and not owe the bank the rest of the money! What is that all about???? If you foreclose in Australia and the bank sells your house for less than you owe - YOU STILL OWE THE BANK THAT MONEY.

People in Australia clean their houses and spruce them up in a foreclosure - as they want the best possible price. In the US, they trash the houses and rip out everything of value .. so the house is essentially worthless. C’mon Reuters - why don’t you address this problem?

I am a hard working peruvian citizen working in Tokyo. I had saved twenty seven thousand dollars along eight years. Last year I deposited my life savings in a pension fund plan in Lima. Until today, my life and retirement savings have gone from US$ 27,000 to only $ 2750. I am depressed, very very depressed and I wonder, citizens of the world, who are we going to make responsible for such huge losses in our livings? WHO?

There are demons and among them I know I can call some by their names: greedy guys at Wall Street. Damn Wall Street!!!

I keep a budget, I didn’t take a loan for a large house or a fancy car, and I live close to work. I also saved some money on the side in case of trouble ahead.

I have never been doing better! Because I avoided the temptation to show off my wealth by having nice things (the American way), the recession affected me very little. Now I’m working aggressively toward having all my debts paid off in case I am laid off in the futre. Always think one step ahead!

Reuters: What are you doing differently due to the meltdown in the world financial markets?

That’s a rather simplistic and one dimensional question…considering that for every 1% drop in the Dow, the typical middle class individual retirement account (401(k), IRA) invested on Wall Street in a conservative (i.e., “safe”) mix of stock & bond mutual funds has also been disappearing at a rate of negative 1%.

Reuters might as well ask a gambler what he or she is doing differently now, after losing more than 40% of what he or she started with at the roulette table of a casino. One cannot bet against the house when the odds are stacked in favor of the house. And when are the odds stacked in favor of the house? Always. That house is Wall Street.

Even if one had a modest $100,000 when the Dow was at 14,000…what remains of one’s retirement nest egg is simply shocking.

In effect, what is left of any similar retirement account is less than what one started with 8 years ago when George W. Bush came on the national scene and resumed the excessive government borrowing and unrealistically low top marginal income tax rates made infamous by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush during their 12 years at the helm of the ship of state. In other words, the root of the problem can be directly traced to the U.S. national debt of some $12 Trillion ($12,000,000,000,000). Yes, that’s 12 million millions.

Unlike you, does a corporate executive with before-tax compensation of say, $10 Million, have any financial worries while your middle class retirement savings is evaporating? Of course not. Even after taxes (assuming any are paid), he or she still has $Millions to manage an alternate-universe type lifestyle that you can only imagine. Imagine your lifestyle if you had even one of those net $Millions to keep for your very own each year. That’s right. Like Fred and/or Frederica $Millionaire, you would never have to depend on a 401(k) or IRA in the first place.

Let’s say for the sake of conversation that you are one of the hard working middle class losers of late…and that it takes another 8 years before the Dow once again reaches 14,000…and that your retirement account just happens to increase dollar-for-dollar what it lost dollar-for-dollar during the past year.

That means that at best you’ll have a 0% ROI (return on investment) after 16 years. Actually, because of inflation your overall return will be negative (say, -30%) due to the time value of the dollar, i.e., the dollar’s lower purchasing power as time wears on.

If you still don’t think that the national debt should be paid off by surcharging the only folks who can afford to do it, i.e., privileged class $Millionaires and super privileged class $Billionaires…then vote to keep Ronald Reagan/Bush economic policies just the way they are. If you think that John McCain is going to change what has made him part and parcel of the $Multi-Millionaire privileged class…well…that’s your “privilege” to think that way.

OK Jack

P.S. It could be that by sheer luck, Mr. & Mrs. Reader, that you happened to roll your retirement account balance out of the stock & bond mutual funds market (e.g., into one or more FDIC insured bank CD’s) just as the Dow was peaking at 14,000 a year ago. If so, congrats! You’re one of the lucky ones to be sure.

What I’m waiting for is such a huge fall in property prices that I see an asset that I really want at a price I can really afford, probably bought from a so-called hardworking family that couldn’t afford it in the first place. Then I’ll live in it and hopefully have enough spare cash to buy lots of undervalued shares to see me into retirement. Pip pip.

I invested a big chunk of my hard earned saving in Share Market in the Gulf Country in which I am working for the last 18+ years. I am feeling very bad loosing half the value of my investment in just few weeks. I think GCC countries, having huge cash accumulated out of high oil revenues can easily keep their share market in good shape by investing therein. But they are not doing so to safe guard the interest of ordinary citizens. Instead they are trying to grab cheaper assets overseas and loosing millions of dollars in the sinking assets. It is high time for GCC countries to do something for ordinary people in their own countries. I hope good sense will prevail.

Just learned yesterday that my “position was being eliminated”. After 9 years of hard work, I have to start over again at the age of 54 and during this crash. Worst of all, I have sat in on many corporate meetings where public money was getting poured into the company in one form or another only to see my CIO…get a raise and new position.

So many comments, it must be time for Financial Crisis Poem:

The Whizz Kids of Wall Street are beating a retreat,
The small time investors are wishing they’d known better,
The working class are feeling it but yet to scream from the pinch,
And all along, too many thought they understood those C-D-O Mc-leveraged things.

Markets are like gravity : Up and down.
Media sensations are like a circus : Bring on the Clowns.
If you want my advice and it’s so easy to say:
Hold your head up high and wait for all this to blow away.

I’m a recent college grad, live in Connecticut, just bought a car and with the financial crisis the price of gas has been falling steadily which has been very useful for me. In August I was filling up for $3.81/gallon, now it’s $3.29! Since energy prices are falling, I am assuming that heating and transportation costs will fall too, making everything a little cheaper. I have no worries about my job or my 30K salary being affected by the crisis, nor do I have any investments to worry about, so my life is not being affected negatively in any way. The falling housing prices make the thought of buying my own property very appealing and possible. Not everyone is hurting during this crisis.