Luckily, I work for a business that does a lot of buying/reselling and given the current market everyone seems to be doing a lot of shopping for used items since they are cheaper. On the other hand a lot of people are also selling items to make their ends meet. I'm not too worried about being laid off.
At this point, for me, it's almost become hilarious. I've never had money, I'm not going to come into money anytime soon and as far as I am concerned the only people who stand to lose anything are the rich, so anymore instead of getting interested in whatever new bs bailout they are proposing I just laugh and say "Let 'em fail". It's not like the government could take anything from me anyway (what are they going to take ? my car? that's barely 4 figures blue book in pristine value - which it isn't)
Something I believe to be little known about this whole banking fiasco is Paulson's role in it. Back in the 90s I believe he was one of the people fighting to get banks a bigger gap in their assets to get loans. I think the old law was $1.00 for every $8.00 they could loan. He wanted it to be something like $12.00 then and I think Bush gave him an even bigger gap. Ironic thing is that law was around to keep this situation from happening. IMO he is the biggest lobbiest on the planet, he successfully got them all the money, then a bailout, and now says we should borrow more money to get out of debt.
Sigh. . . borrow money to get out of debt. Oh well /rant off.
*I did some quick diggin' Net Capital Rule is what Paulson pushed for. In 2004 it was abolished, wikipe
dia says this:
As Chairman of the SEC, Mr. William H. Donaldson presided over the April 2004 meeting. It was held at the request of the major Wall Street investment houses, including Goldman Sachs, then headed by future Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.. The firms requested the release from the net capital rule. The complaint that was put forth by the investment banks was of increasingly onerous regulatory requirements -- in this case, not U.S. regulator oversight, but European Union regulation of the foreign operations of US investment groups.