I see my friends having their employment hours cut, and some of my friends and family have lost their jobs alltogether. Who is safe out there? And are we, as a country, strong enough to actually recover from this? How many people will go hungry before this is all over?

Nah. Word games.  The word is "depression".  The air is half-out the souffle`.

I hope it is just a recession....we could be in for far more if sentiment doesn't bottom soon. I am watching key market levels closely...under 7,000 on dow-it won't stop falling again until the 5,000's or lower... We did have a bounce off support last week that has now been cut in half and will be gone by the end of the week.

We have a congress with the lowest approval ratings in the history of our great nation.  We look to them to fix this mess we are in.  My question is, why are those losers still in Washington?  Shouldn't we elect some new blood for starters.  We need to clean house.  Term limits in Washington would be a good start.  If our President has term limits, our governors have term limits, and our state legislators has term limits, why not our Congress?  Why do we have six term senators?

My 2 cents won't help the mess we are ALL in......but, OBAMA, BUSH, CONGRESS, or wherever EVERYONE wants to point fingers...make sure you look at yourself,  at the person across the table, across the room, your buddy, your friends, etc.,etc.,etc......there's your problem !

So we Americans screwed up by wanting too much too soon and not having the funding for it.  So we Americans screwed up by not learning about the true economics of saving more money than we spend, working a little harder, eating a little less, and believing in the bird in hand over the turkey in the tree.  So we Americans squeezed the equity out of our homes to pump up the economy artificially and now must shoulder the blame because, surprise surprise, the vast majority was wicked up to the top who simply expected the wicking to continue indefinitely.  So we now can classify ourselves into a recession/depression or who cares what it's called because it's payback time, right?  Wrong.  This teeny little backflow of cash is just a trickle in the Hoover Dam of a melt down waiting for the day when our babies have to pay for the excesses of our execs.  Blame the unions (unfairly, yet, understandably, for trying to equalize the wealth that wasn't there), blame the execs (hey, it's a crime to keep a sucker with his money), blame the real estate market bubble or the pathetic excuse for our Congress.  Blame all you want until you are no longer angry or resentful.  Then cut back to the needs and ... spend ... wisely ... save ... prudently ... splurge ... never.

Ichigo is corect.  Selling new houses started struggling in April 2006 on the project I was part of in southern california and we started layoffs in June 2006 which have not stopped.  Creative finanacing carried the market for the next 6-12 months and then mid 2007 the finanacing disappeared.  Companies were slow to react to cuting back on costs including layoffs and didn't want to believe what was happening.  We are seen this now by excessive cutbacks.  Many of these employees will be hired back after the panic but many complanies should have cut back sooner.  We are two years into the downturn and neither the Democratic Congress or Republican Presidency did anything.  It was pre=determined that the Democrats were going to win in August and the Stock Market has taken that into account.  The attacking of business and Wall Street during the campaign was not helping.  With retirement funds and everyday savings invested the separation between wall street and main street doesn't exist like it did 25 years ago.

why are we all woryyeedd know ???? we all knwe this was coming just nobody had the $%#@@& to say it ..how can we fix it?? the same way you are trying to figure out how to stay in your house ,keep your car ,your pension and so on ...back to basics people and the government hates the word cut backs in thier own house ...!!!!if i have to cut back to stay in my house and pay my bills shoulnt the government do the same and save money ???? insted of calling it bail outs why we dont call it xmas money for the stupid and corupted  in wall street.. if i need a bail out its called walefare and aim going tobe  called a drag in this economy.. how ironic..pardon my gramar aim p%$# &^..

This depression will make the Great Depression look like a walk in the park.THE US WILL EITHER PULL OUT OF IT OR BE DOOMED TO THIRD WORLD STATUS........Keep buying those guns as you will need them when anarchy breaks out. Laizze  Fair capitalism cannot sustain as Communism was also doomed.

What a long strange trip its been. this recession has been building for years the only thing that put it off was the banks giving out credit to everyone no matter what. Of course eventually that had to explode and it did into what we have today. You can not keep raising prices, raising corporate pay at an exagerated rate, ship out jobs over seas and not pay the average american enough to keep up with inflation and not have it blow up in your face eventually. Really the more you fall behind inflation the harder it is to purchased anything let alone large ticket items. You can' t finance a car for three or four years anymore you can't afford the payment. Its not so much people living beyond their means its the fact that its becoming impossible to live within your income braket anymore. So what happens people refinance the house as it goes up in value so they can pay off that credit card so they can afford that car payment because they had to finance the last one until it had a bazillion miles on it. Corporate greed is the sole cause of this whole mess and until they realize they have to pay someone enough to purchase their items this recession will never go away. Because they sure dont pay enough in China for them to purchase the items they make for us.