There has been a whole lot of talk about the stock market crash and whereas folks pretty much understand the real estate market crash, because their homes are worth less than they owe on them; still, many people do not get the stock market crash or even why it crashed. You see, many folks did not have any stocks, so they do not see the real problem.

Folks that had 401Ks and retirement accounts understand, as their accounts were suddenly worth 30 to 40% less, ouch! Of course, when folks feel poor, they stop spending and that means companies have to lay-off employees. Laid off employees might lose the homes to foreclosure, not good, not good at all. Most economists are predicting 7.5 to 8.6% unemployment within the next 10-months. So, even if you believe you are unaffected, you may not be for long.

 

How bad have things gotten so far? Well, between the stock market crash and the real estate crash, the US Economy watched about 14 Trillion evaporate. If you throw in commercial real estate and bonds it could be as high as 17 Trillion, which was the annual GDP for the US some 3-years ago, now it’s under 13 Trillion. To put this into perspective Germany had the number two GDP with 5.5 Trillion, now they are at 3.8 Trillion, as the cascading financial crisis rings round the world.

 

Many people believe that electing a certain president can make things better and the answer is No, probably not, but a President can certainly make things worse. For instance, if they raise taxes on business or individual citizens this will slow recovery and increase the damage to the economy. So, I hope you will consider all this.