Depressed about the Depression?

Amazing to think this discussion of yours is three months old! It's even more relevant today. I'm not depressed, per se. I was spooked a bit earlier this week, because of the weight of all this. But I'm mostly just anxious and a little jittery right now about it. As we really get into things, I doubt this feeling will go away. I've been a bit paranoid about spending my money this year too. Even though I don't spend it on myself often, I feel reluctant to do it much at all until I feel like I'm on more solid ground. Past this insecurity? Well only restored safety and security could do that, and while I think it's worth going for, it'll probably take a bit. How can we get past this looming potential Depression? (I like think we're nearly there instead of actually in it, right now's the recession no one wanted to call on back when it started) Well...focusing on our local communities will probably help alot, I'm not sure what else there is to be done minus creating our own jobs and working for being able to sustain our own lives without alot of outside help or stuff. Makes it easier to weather things, you know? Funny, how environmentalists, hippies...etc, have been bugging society for years to live self-reliant and "sustainable lifestyles" and now we really gotta, huh?

i am just trying to keep from spending any money since my hubby will be changing jobs soon which makes me worry since the healthcare will be lost for a few months which i cant go with out but im just trying to survive and find little things here and there to save money.. im not gonna do any project on my house or anything till all of this crap is over with!!

This is really scary. I lost my job three weeks ago. I am still confused as to why. Unemployment will not give me any benefits yet, because they seem to think I was fired. I'm to have a phone interview tomorrow to determine if I was let go for misconduct. Today I received my last check and low and behold I got paid severance. (thank God), so I am totally confused about my termination, you do not get severance if you are fired, so I guess I was laid off. Well anyway, back to your question about the recession. I am trying to handle it, like I said, I am unemployed, my husband is not working as well. We are cutting back, we do not use the car unless it is really necessary. He has two job interviews tomorrow, so we will have to gas up. I do not go to the grocery store as often. I'm making due with what I already have in the house. I rent, and do not have a washing machine, I usually go to the laundrymatt, now I have been hand washing my clothes, since I am home now. Which is not so bad, when I take my clothes off I wash them right away, so that I do not have a pile up of dirty clothes, that is a savings in itself. For entertainment we go to the local outdoor concerts held in our town each Friday. I thank God, that we still have a roof over our heads, and enough food to eat, the rest will have to handle itself. It's scary, but I am trying to be strong and try not to stess out. I know better days are ahead. God is good, and we all will get past this.

Although there are many factors to the economic slowdown we are experiencing, probably the biggest factor is the oil crisis. The best thing we can do is drill here and now. We have enough oil and oil shale here in th US to ween ourselves off foreign oil for many years to come and give us time to make the transition to alternative forms of energy. The problem is, the politicians in Washington, mostly the democrats are against drilling here. They argue that drilling here and drilling now will not yield any results and relief at the pump for at least 10 years. According to experts in the fields of oil and energy, in places where we already have the infrastructure(oil rigs and other equipment) in place, we could start seeing the first barrels of oil from those sites in less than a year. In places where we would have to build the infrastructure, I think it would be anywhere from 3 to 6 years. Only in Alaska, in the Anwar Province, it would supposedly take up to ten years to start seeing any oil, but that is because we would have to first explore and find the oil and then put the infrastructure in place. Not only that, people in Alaska need and want the oil drilling to begin there because the economy there is so poor. Also, financial and economic experts believe that the psychological effect of knowing that we are drilling here and now would result in the price at the pump beginning to drop virtually overnight. But the government won't do anything about it until we put pressure on them to do so, which is the way it should be. There is a petition you can sign at AmericanSolutions.com that will put pressure on Congress to start drilling. Sign it and tell everyone you know about it. Let's tell the politicians to stop playing their political games and do their job, which is the will of the people of the United States.

I am concerned because we seem to be in a "perfect storm" of economic problems. I live in Florida and the bottom has totally fallen out of the real estate and construction industry here. Many people, and not just investors, are upside down in their homes. By that I mean that they owe more money on their mortgages than their house would bring on the market today. The real estate market had been booming here and home pricing had really escalated. However, houses that were selling for 250,000 or more so people have large mortgages on them are now selling for half that. Also, some of the houses built on spec by builders are now being offered for less than 100,000 so how can people with existing homes compete with that. In addition, many people in my area are unemployed due to the housing downturn. Realtors, mortgage brokers, and construction-related people have all taken a major hit. If they try to leave the area to go to an area with more opportunity, many of them cannot sell their homes and therefore foreclosure rates are way up. This combined with high gas prices and food prices are making it very difficult for people to live.