Dear Swami:
I've been watching CNBC and "Mad Money" and "Cavuto on Business" and all that stuff, and they go on and on about how this financial crisis will affect "Main Street." But they have yet to really tell me how this will affect, well, me, specifically. This is exactly where a crystal ball is needed, so get to it.
Widespread Panic
Dear W.P.:
Ask and you shall receive. The Swami trusts that, like Don Vito Corleone, you are a person who insists on hearing bad news immediately, so let us, indeed, get to it:
-- Have you heard the joke about how, in situations such as these, a 401K becomes a 201K? Well, gazing specifically at your portfolio -- which you loaded with high-risk stocks back in the summer of 2000 and forgot all about -- it looks like your retirement nest egg will be about a 1K.
-- You know that credit card application you got in the mail the other day? The one that enticed you with checks that you could write against a new account? The one you were going to use to write a check that would cover the outstanding balances on your other credit cards? Well, too late.
-- As for your our daughter, a senior in high school who was hoping for student loans to cover the $22,000 in tuition, fees, room and board at the U of I ... hmmmm ... start dropping none-too-subtle hints about the College of Lake County.
-- Oh, and that new or used car you're going to need in the dead of winter when your 125,000-mile Chevrolet Malibu craps out in the snow? The only loans available will be from a guy who breaks tumbs.
But don't get all down in the mouth. True, both the financial markets and the credit culture are teetering on the brink with all of this, but our employees in Congress are still at their desks, trying to hammer out an agreement.
Or maybe that is the kind of scenario that puts the "panic" in the phrase "financial panic."
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