Meltdown

So I am in the front row seat watching the financial meltdown going on in the United States. I know that times are tough in other parts of the world too, but Fairfield County, CT is so full of people who work in finance either locally or in New York City that it's hard to ignore the fact that the economic ship is being buffetted by the biggest storm in half a century.

There are plenty of anecdotes of people stressed because of poorly-performing business but superficially, things are normal,despite the rising prices of food and gas. Kids are going to summer camp or to visit relatives, mothers are carpooling and then running errands, the mailman still looks pretty cheerful as he drops of the mail. The shops downtown seem to be full of browsing customers, and the businesses seem to be gearing up for the season of summer sales. All my neighbors seem to have their jobs (for which I am very glad). So who knows? Is the unease then only mine? Perhaps I have been reading too many blogs of the doom and gloom kind? Only time will tell which way things will go in Fairfield County.

To expand more on the doom and gloom bit: I am enjoying discovering new blogs everyday that deal with this matter. [Note: I said that I am "enjoying discovering" not "enjoying" other people's misery.] All these years, my knowledge of finance was limited to simple math: x amount of income, keep expenditure less than income, difference goes into savings. I let K. handle investments that called for anything more complicated than this simple formula. But now thanks to the prophets of doom everywhere in the blogosphere, I find that Wall Street, retail banks and mortgage companies have done some extremely complicated investing all of which is set to implode unless someone richer bails them out. Problem is, no one has $10 trillion just lying around, not even all the American taxpayers put together.

I'll link to some of these blogs in my next post. I should add that K., who is more financially savvy than I am, says that some of these bloggers should be taken with a pinch of salt, but it would be good to at least know the range of arguments out there as this economic crisis unfolds.