I sell products around the world and last year has been great b/c a weak dollar means we sell more overseas. It took a long time for the dollar to decline, but in a very short amount of time, the US dollar has gotten much stronger. This is the one year graph of the Australian dollar:
AUDUSD=X: Summary for AUD to USD - Yahoo! Finance

What it means in real world terms is that inflation is no longer a problem for us since what we import is now cheaper. Its bad news if you work somewhere that exports overseas, but day to day it is actually a good thing. The crap you buy at wal-mart is going to get cheaper or at least stay the same price.

And since inflation is no longer a problem, the feds can cut interest rates to near zero which will get people borrowing money again. In theory anyway.

No one is going to lend money because of this mortgage fiasco and if they do lend money they are going to be way, WAY more stringent on the recommendations for it which they should have done to begin with which is why they are in this mess now.

That's where the In theory disclaimer comes from. I don't see a way out of this mess. This is the spookiest story I have ever read in my life: Germany takes hot seat as Europe falls into the abyss - Telegraph

I mean the subhead alone almost made me crap my pants: "We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars."

The American markets have an hour left and will probably lose 10% of value today. I'm going to a zero extra expenditures policy as of right now. No more eating out, no Saturday movies, going to one car...Hard times are right around the corner gang.

Well I think the most who are going to be hit hard are the ones who live off of their credit cards. I don't have any so it won't matter to me. I just need to shell out more money for gas, etc and need to budget accordingly and with a loan that I will be paying off in 2 months that money will help out a lot as I was going to use it towards my college funds but now I'm thinking leave it in my savings/money market even though there really isn't an investment on that either.