The hits the market has taken are in point of fact the worst since The Great Depression. Even in my relatively well-insulated job with a beltway bandit working in healthcare related issues, the rumblings of the economic contraction are being felt. For me personally, on paper I’m having the best year of my life. I’m making more than $1K per year I’ve been alive, my obscene amount of credit card debt is holding steady and if I behave myself and don’t use them to buy stuff that isn’t essential will actually go down. I even felt I had sufficient margin so I can plan to have a lasik procedure done now that I’m old enough to need bifocals (one pair of glasses I can manage, but I’d ruin my eyes using the wrong part of the lens if I had bifocals). But I’m not expecting good things next year at raise time.

On top of that, especially given his cabinet picks of late, I expect Obama will be pushing the exact worst options for fixing the economy, and that if he misses any opportunity to stifle recovery either Czarina Pelosi or Herr Reid will ensure they don’t. I expect a misery index of only 21.98 to be a wistful memory of the good old days by the time he faces re-election. These people aren’t clueless. Clueless people guess randomly and get at least SOME of the answers right.

No my friend, like it or not, this is the one true thing the media is saying. Things are bad, and they are going to get worse.