It has been a crazy day to watch the American Stock Market literally start to fall apart. Having lost my job earlier this year I know first hand how bad the economy is getting and I hope we can find a way to turn it around soon. I have been thinking about how bad things are getting all day.

This morning on NPR there was a conversation going on about how the housing market colapse and the true effect that forclosed and abandonded houses have on neighborhoods. Once one house falls beyond repair, they said that the property value in a 1/8 mile radius drops, start adding 3, 4 and 5 forclosed and abandoned houses and you get into miles of depressed house values. It is called the broken window effect, and is mentioned a lot in the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.  I read this book a while back and it was a great book and I think it really illustrates what our society is seeing right now. We have hit the tipping point in terms of consumer confidence. But that is obvious. I mean how can you be confident in spending any kind of money if you can’t be sure you will ever earn it back and why would you put it in the bank if the bank is only going to close or be sold off.

Is this the start of out next Great Depression or can out government and large corporations find a way to pull the blinders over our eyes again? It is to the point in our history that the gap between rich and poor is just too large. We are witnessing the natural leveling out of our economy as far as I see it. Today showed how fragile our economy is and we saw how false the country’s most inflated salaries really are. I can only imagine how it would feel to watch your entire nest egg for retirement or for sending your child to college, disappear in a matter of hours, all the while not spending a dime of it.

Sorry big buisness, this one fell on you.