Every man, woman and child is going to be in debt for

[2speak]

$37,000 or more so that some won't loose money in their 401k's and others wont' loose their $7.00 hr jobs (except thousands of children that don't have incomes will start off in debt). I did some research and as of last year every American was in government debt for 27,000. Am I seeing this correctly?

[closeupready]

1. Yep, that's about right.

n/t

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Current national debt is approx. $9.9 trillion, which is about $32,600 a person

According to the national debt clock, http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

If we do, say, a $700 billion bail out, and if ithat is all borrowed money, that's about $2300 a person.

[Winterblues]

4. And just imagine what will happen if interest rates climb a little

Say if they were to go to six percent. We would be paying far more in Interest alone than our entire Defense Budget. Imagine if inflation were to suddenly go crazy and Interest rates were to jump to eighteen percent as they did in 1980. We would be increasing our debt byu over a trillion dollars a year just in Interest. For a true fiscal conservative this must be maddening..It is beyond absurd.

[leftofcool]

3. Too late for most 401K's

We lost most of ours in two days. Retirement that was only 18 months away is now a non issue in our family. Time to keep plugging for most of us and keep our chins up.

[Ilsa]

5. I'm so sorry. I haven't lost that much. I sold some equities that

were not in mutual fuds a few months ago. Got lucky with that, but I still lost some other money in my IRA. I'm figuring I'm down about 25%, but I won't know for certain until the statement comes in the mail in a few days. I don't even know yet about my hubby's retirement funds. The big problem is that we didn't have enough saved to begin with, yet we are further ahead than most American families.

[leftofcool]

6. Our retirements so far are safe.

But those are small compared to the 401 K we were counting on to live off of for about 15 years