Economic Crash-and-Burn

How timely that all of this widely varying discourse is taking place about the state of the economy. Because I'm studying rhetoric and learning that it not only describes what's happening, but that it can actually shape outcomes, I'm watching these events from a different perspective than I would have a month ago. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in some of the "smoke-filled rooms" where decisions about the government bailout are being made to observe how rhetoric impacts the results.

So, added to our recent concerns about strangelets, vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles and microscopic black holes is the escalating anxiety about the financial markets. (Hey, a thought: Could there be a correlation? The money I used to have in my 403(b) has to have gone somewhere, after all.) Everyone I have spoken with about this today are angry about their personal losses, confused about the issues, and frustrated about the lack of consensus on what should be done.

What I'm hearing is that some experts are telling us not to worry because the markets will bounce back like they always do, while others are clearly predicting that things are going to get worse before they get better. Financial planning professionals are advising us to hunker down and leave our retirement savings where it is (as long as it's allocted appropriately) and to eliminate debt. I agree with this advice, in theory, but it won't be all that easy to pay down debt for the millions who are underemployed and living paycheck to paycheck -- not to mention those who have already lost their jobs -- and have no choice but to use credit cards to feed their kids. And many of those whose straits aren't yet quite that dire have already lost so much of their nesteggs that they're tempted to liquidate the rest and stuff it in a mattress before it, too, dwindles away to nothing.

Our esteemed leaders and others in-the-know are saying that we shouldn't agonize over this because most of us have very little or no control over what's going on. Okay, thanks for the tip. I'll try my best to remember that. But what I can't help worrying about is this: As bad as things are now, what if we haven't even come close to hitting bottom yet?