Black Box Report

There are nights when I feel like a broken record; oil prices setting new highs by the day, new housing reports with staggering foreclosure data, every day stories of people stretched to the breaking point, and too often beyond. Make no mistake, before it became vogue I’ve been warning against the economic hurricane that's fast approaching and the last thing I wanted was to be proven right. But that being said, this is America; if we keep our heads and finally get some sober leadership we can make it through even this. After all, we have seen worse.

The Great Depression saw the Wall Street crash where over two days the market fell by nearly a quarter. In one week the market lost ten times the amount of the annual budget of the federal government. As scary as IndyMac’s collapse and the spectre of another hundred or so banks possibly being on the watch list is nothing compared to what they saw in the early 30's, where 11,000 banks - nearly half of the banks in America - shut their doors. FDR famously declared a three day bank holiday when he told Americans "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." America listened are we persevered.

In the 80"s we saw nearly 800 banks close because of the Savings and Loan crisis.

And when the dot com bubble burst 8 years ago, we saw huge selloffs in tech stocks and nearly $5 trillion in market value wiped out.

My point is not “don't worry, be happy.” In fact, I don't think we’ve seen in at least a generation the systemic mess that's staring at us today. But I do think we have weathered storms before. Perspective is important, and unfortunately, I think were going to need it.