Random Thoughts on a Friday Evening

My stock portfolio, like probably everybody else’s, is at a new low. Let’s not talk about it. I promise I believe things will work out, and it’s not like I’m checking my numbers every day; it’s just Mint.com likes to e-mail me status updates at the end of each week. So I’m just saying.

The bailout, which, up until now, I have been incorrectly hyphenating as bail-out—let’s not talk about that either—is actually boring me now. Will they? Won’t they? What did they change? What are they promising now? I’m just so disillusioned with the whole political process. Do you know I already give 25% of my paychecks to the government, as a combination of federal, state, social security and medicare taxes? 25%!! And I’m not in a high income bracket. The consolation is that I’ll get a large part of it back in a refund… or is that even a consolation? And now, as if all the taxes the government is already bringing in aren’t enough, the massively indebted USA is taking out further funds. Don’t even try to tell me it won’t affect my wallet. I don’t want to hear it.

And, since we’re talking about it, why in the world aren’t condo prices dropping drastically around here? I mean, if “no one is able to get a loan” as someone told me this week and “real estate is terrible” as I’m always hearing, why the heck aren’t the sellers lowering their prices? You’d think, to help compensate for my lowered portfolio, home values would follow suit, but no, not in Chicagoland. Not in the places I’d want to live in.

So. I have nothing else to say but that I’m happy to have a job and I’m happy to be healthy and I’m happy I’m not a politician or related to one, since, apparently, you’re either a media darling or a media scapegoat and either one is annoying.

I’m just an ordinary American, tired, suspicious and trying to make sense of things.

Filed under economy, the everyday |