I think in the financial world things are getting really scary out there. Not that the NY Post is the best rag in the world, but check out this story about Wall Street firms starting to hand out the pink slips - Blood on the Street.

I got a dejavu feeling like it was the dotcom crash again when I saw this this headline -
Yahoo expected to cut hundreds of jobs. I see the Yahoo bus on 19th Avenue in the City every morning picking people to take them to Yahoo in Mountain View. I wonder how long before Yahoo cuts that bus service.

And then I saw this article about retired people in Japan - Half of Japan's Elderly Poor Won't Get Pensions, Nikkei Says. I can't believe that this kind of stuff is happening.

And you know people at work act like nothing is going on, like if you don't talk about maybe the recession will go away. The financial markets are in free fall and no one cares. I'm just happy I sold all my stock in the summer of 2007 while the Dow was still in the high 13,000. I missed the 14,200 Dow high, but at least I got out at 13,800 instead of trying to get out now. Half of my assets are in conservative funds. Maybe not the best way to make money, but at least I'm not losing any sleep or money worry about losing money because the markets are dropping little by little every day. I heard one Wall Street analyst say that the next few years should be about presevation of capital and not growth.

They say this is how it happened in the depression of the 1920's. The markets deteriorated slowly and by the time everyone figured it out and trying to get their money out of the banks, it was too late. And I'm like, thank god I bought into that gold fund in 2004. I should have known something was up when by 2006 the price I had paid to get into the fund doubled. That's where the other half of my assets are, in gold. Got rid of all the silver, which kind of bummed me out, only because an opportunity came along to take full advantage of gold's phenomenal growth. One analyst is predicting gold will $2,000 and I'm like I bought gold stock in 2004 when it was $400 an ounce and now it's trading above $1,0000 I believe. Those natural resources stocks I bought also doubled when I cashed myself out of the market.

Such crazy, crazy times ahead financially. Food is so expensive. I don't know how families are makiing it. My dentist told me that in El Salvador the local people are really hurting because Americans have stopped buying up the land and spending money. My dentist said when people with enough disposable income to buy property in South America start cutting back, you know the economy is in a ton of trouble.