Wall Street Leaves Seniors In Bad Shape

Everyone's feeling queasy these days watching the financial markets plummet due to the sub-prime loan fiasco. Younger folks, however, at least have time on their side. Senior citizens are seeing their life savings tank with little time for a market rebound. It sends a powerful message that whatever a person has saved for retirement might not be enough, unless it's protected from market influences. For most people, that isn't the case.

Wall Street has failed us. Of course, the markets have never been much more than a gamble. So many years of market growth lulled a lot of Americans into believing they were dumping their savings into a great money machine that could not fail. It worked well - for a while - but when the machine seized up, we have massive problems.

Our country is in economic crisis. Most of us held out hope that a bad year or two would be expected and then equilibrium would be reached. This recent crisis, though, puts us back a long way. Top CEOs and other experts on high finance are expecting even worse times before it gets better, and it's going to last a while.

We already know how it's going to affect retirees who live off Social Security and whatever they saved and have invested. Social Security still is there, but much less is in their bank accounts. More are going back to work at a time in their lives they shouldn't have to work - unless they want to.

This is scary stuff, no matter what the age. We will come out of this eventually, but it's going to be more painful than most of us realize.