Not to be morbid or anything…
posted in Economy |But: Have you looked at your 401(k) recently? Or your gummint equivalent?
Mine has dropped 26.9% since the start of the year. So far.
(OmegaDad’s, thank heavens, is actually up for the year, because I had him stash it in bonds ages ago.)
This is a picture of the past year on the Dow Jones Industrial Average:
See that steep drop-off over at the right? That’s the past few weeks. The Dow Jones has lost something like 20% in two weeks.
MSNBC is now showing some sort of figures purporting to be the FTSE (British stock exchange) and Nikkei (Japanese stock exchange) averages on the front page. Though, since they’ve got the wrong figures, I haven’t the vaguest idea what the numbers are supposed to be in reality. Anyway, this seems to be a Sign Of The Times, since normally those aren’t shown on the front page at all, but are buried deep in the business section.
Every morning I think, “Oh, it can’t get worse–surely today there will be a rally!” And every morning, there’s yet another piece of hideous financial news–or BushCo gets on TV telling us things will be okay, really!–and the market dives again.
I just worry about people who are retired, or retiring soon, and what this is doing to them.
