Financial Panic? What panic?

From NZ Conservative

[Update Tuesday 930am, Bail-out rejected Wall Street Crashes 750 points]Pat yourself on the back. You've just become a historical footnote.Are you feeling "financially distressed"? Well, if not you should be. You should be either "distressed" or "panicked". Distress is what you feel after a speculative bubble implodes but panic is what you experience when what you though was the bottom turns out to be a ledge over a chasm. I'm reluctant to look down.

Neville Bennett of the National Business Review has done us the kind service of comparing financial "panics". Yes, it's a "panic". Of all panics from 1847 to 1929, Bennett asserts that 2008 is most similar to 1929 because of the relentless train of morbid news and annihilation of landmark institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.In other words, recollect yourself and prepare dusty anecdotes for future grandchildren, you've just passed through the most volatile week (Monday 22) of the most turbulent year since 1929.This week is the week after the week before and there's no guarantee of a solution.

The proposed $700billion intervention, called a bail-out by some, a buy-in by others, is the biggest US Government action since the Depression. It goes to Congress vote on Monday. There are rumours fizzing around on the details and some are addressed at this link "Myth vs Fact". [Update 940pm, here is the 110pg discussion draft]I don't know what to think, it's bewildering, more so if you also recall the baby-boomers are coming up to retirement age en masse and we, their children, are meant to be creating wealth at a level to sustain their long-assumed retirement incomes. This time around our "depression" will be on Facebook.

Familiarise yourself with past panics, crashes, and financial imbroglios:Panic of 1873.Panic of 1893.Panic of 1907.Crash of 1929.

Now might be a good time to look your finances in the eye and reorganise.