As for myself, I am becoming more concerned. I am contracting at a steel company right now, and water cooler rumor has it that a competitor has had to resort to charging customers 50% up front on orders because their revolving credit to buy from suppliers and offer terms is gone. I heard the same type of thing is thing for some franchise owners where in they might have issues making payroll as credit terms are drying up. Neither of those things sounds good, since we are a very credit dependent economy.

As for my family? We did a 30 year fixed mortgage and paid points to boot. The idea was that at 4.86% with tax write offs on top, it was better to invest the rest. The later never really materialized however, as we are mostly tech investors and have not seen much appealing over the last year or so and have been sitting mostly in cash. That may turn out to be the a very lucky move, given the fire sale prices that seem to be approaching in the market.

Similarly my wife and I are largely in liquid cash and have been for about a year now.

She delivered 60% of her party on a highly controversial bailout, that's pretty darn good.

Please do.

Even if there wasn't such an action during today's vote, she's already as much as said that she wouldn't pass this bill without GOP support.

Honestly, are you complaining or just finding fault? Wasn't that the whole idea? It was supposed to be a bipartisan bill, right?

BTW, I have accounts at WaMu. FDIC kept me from pulling my funds out when I first heard they were in trouble. It can do the same for bigger account holders if the insurance limit is raised.

Anyway, my main personal worry is that, because I am a renter, I have to keep income rather high. There's no just having enough to eat here. Incidentally, my 1br apt in Hawaii is more than the old mortgage in Tennessee.

I hope you will, Rambie. The personal aspect of your comment was interesting, as most folks here seem to debate the political aspects.

To be honest, today I am sort of anxious for the first time, even though I am pretty liquid.

I wonder how other people here actually feel about this crisis.

Are you concerned about your own situation? Are you getting more or less anxious?
Or does it all seem an abstraction occuring at a level where people talk in terms of billions of dollars?

::shudder::

Because reportedly Nancy instructed her whip to basically release the Dems- which is obviously a choice to let the GOP own the defeat of this bill. Why do that unless her intention is to go back to the plan without the concessions that were made to get GOP on board (esp, adding the ACORN slush fund back in.)

IOW, my theory is that when they saw that they weren't going to get enough GOP votes, her calculation was that she isn't going to make her vulnerable members take ownership of a potentially toxic bill unless there was something in it for them. And as an added bonus, by letting this one go down and subsequently letting the Dow take a nosedive, she'll get to ratchet up the partisan blame game even more. And of course Boehner was foolish enough to giftwrap it for her and Barney when he said that they'd probably have gotten enough GOP votes if Nancy hadn't hurt everyone's feelings.

Anyway, we'll find out soon enough when we see the next move on the chessboard.

I thought it was the Bush Administration that got this ball rolling with a 3-page outline. Look DLS, there is plenty of us all over the political spectrum that do not like this bailout idea there is no reason to throw insults around.

Agreed, that's why I said, “I hope I can weather the storm ahead as I hope everyone who was mature in their personal finances will.”

DLS, I can't tell if you're disagreeing with me or not.