Absolutely. I am proud to be an American, but we are known for being greedy, living beyond our means and all the while being completely ignorant to the absolute fact that we are swimming in debt.

You cannot spend trillions of dollars on the war in Iraq and completely ignore our economy, and not expect to see repercussions -- disastrous ones.

I have faith that because we are the United States of America we can pull ourselves out of this one. But it is going to take a lot of change and effort -- and in the mean time the American people will continue suffering.

It wasn't that hard to see this one coming. Too many people borrowing far too much money to buy ridiculously overpriced houses.

"The things you own, wind up owning you"
- Tyler Durden

Yeah, it has been predicted by Robert Kiyosaki in his book Prophecy, and there's more coming. It was printed in 2002, and he even shows how to take advantage of it. anytime we have people who invest money so far separated from those who earn it, there's trouble. And so many who earn it have no idea what it means to invest (and potentially lose) their retirement.

Victoria, I actually heard that increasing rents have slowed down, and in some neighborhoods are decreasing (by like 3%, but still, that's something)! Apparently the city is too expensive for a lot of recent grads who don't want to try their hands at getting jobs in this economic climate. Who knows where they could go from here. But to answer your question Nico, I don't think a lot of people saw this coming...

I think when I started to hear that it wasn't enough to be a millionaire anymore, that billionaire was now the standard--and watched CEO pay get so out of whack with companies so highly overvalued--many times more than what profits would justify, I got a sense the order of things had gone awry.

That's why this seems more like a correction to me than a crisis.

(Now, if it would only trickle down to New York rents!)