Kudos for doing this Amelie, I've thought of doing the same but haven't gotten around to it. How does this crisis effect me?

Well let's say it's enough to make a grown man cry. I was fired from my job, on a b.s. reason, the day before Thanksgiving. Admittedly, it wasn't much a job as has been the case since I graduated 4 years ago. In anycase, I am lucky. My dad is a farmer so I can always find work on his farm.

However, I have to travel 2 hours to get there and now spend weekdays on the farm, and weekends at my home where my boyfriend is. Essentially, this crisis has forced me away from my love. The reunions on the weekends are nice though, and we are making due.

However, it is not easy and I have been reduced to tears over the fact that the only thing I did wrong was get a bachelor's degree in fine art with honors. I'm reduced to tears by the daunting challenge of finding a job close to my love in this climate as well. I'm reduced to tears over how I'm seperated from the one I want to be with the most.

Furthermore being on the farm and working doesn't allow me to look for a job as well as I could back home. However, unemployment is not an option now that I'm working for my dad. Also, the benefits would not be enough to support ourselves. Thus, I'm forced back to the farm. Damned if you, damned if you don't- seems to be the saying of the moment.

Regarding the farm, the crisis has caused my father to be unable to sell cattle the way he should. He has to wait and wait and pray he makes the decision to sell at the right time, and pray he's chosen the right price to sell at (they are all lower than they should be). At times he has been unable to sell when he wants to and the lower prices have caused his business to be less profitable. Now, I'm back working for him causing another expense. My father is a great businessman- so I know he'll make due.

Times are not easy for anyone. No decisions are clearly the right ones. At times you feel paralyzed by this uncertainty. At times it can cause grown men to cry.

The first waves are already rolling over my family, with myself & others to come, Amelie. I have no kids, with is an advantage, as I can then help the others out. But it's a big clan, and I've already had 3 lose their jobs. Since we're living in slightly more protected regions, that helps, but still... these 3 were exposed to international markets, and as sales fell... they got tossed. And these were from fair-trading & family-owned businesses.

More widely, those involved with housing & manufacturing are in their last months before they hit the wall... and all those in government have seen the first stages, the freezes, come in. Next they lose the consultants, so my life gets interesting come March 31st. Waited decades to buy a house, and now... at the bottom... likely have to move, and thus, sell. Ouch.

My main advice for two years solid to the younger ones has been to get into college, run up the debt, and stay there as long as possible. Come out when yer head's full, and there's some light in the work world. Or maybe better, when you're ready to create some light. They are, and they will.

Otherwise, if you're solid, celebrate the Holidays by making sure everyone knows they've always got somewhere to live - make the offer of a room or a couch. Because the stress, and feeling of being alone, is enough to kill. It's not needed, and that level of fear doesn't help, and yes, such an offer MATTERS. If you don't have a house or are gonna lose it, get the discussion going. Housing's the single biggest bill most of us face, and better to strap on your Brave kit and talk now, ahead of time, than beat yourself to bits & HAVE to talk later.

Have a good season, Amelie. And even if you're down to nothin' but two arms, make sure you wrap those around the ones you love. Which is a silly sentiment from an old Hockey Goon, but when you hear it from these quarters, that means the last hold-outs have given up, and come out with their hands up. Cheers.

And thanks for the brave post.

I'm retired and so far still have an income but I have a son who is a manager with a GM dealership and I'm really concerned about him. (You never stop worrying about your kids no matter how old they are.) I think - knock on wood - he will have a job as long as the dealership exists, but how long that will be I don't know.

Best wishes for the holidays and peace and luck in the New Year to you Amelie, and everyone else on TPM.

I've been laid off with no severence pay. At my age and with my resume there is little chance I will ever be hired again in my current (maybe I should start saying former) profession. I have no pension. I probably can pay my property taxes this year but I am in jeopardy next year unless I can find some sort of work. For reasons I will not go into, my 6 year old daughter is in a private school which I will no longer be able to afford. I cannot imagine looking into that young innocent face and telling her she cannot go back to her school. It is all a bit overwhelming.

Still, I wish you all a happy holiday and a healthy new year.

Thank you for a most thoughtful post. Personally, I think we too often hear about the focus on a multitude of proposed fixes with a desired trickle-down effect, which highlight the struggles of industry futures and gloss over what is now the day-to-day reality of the working class.

I'm a divorced mom of 3 boys. I stopped regularly buying cereal & milk for my children at the beginning of the school year, although we are still able to intermittently manage toast or english muffins (if they are on sale) and jelly, and occasionally I can allow them to get a reduced-price breakfast at school. In my house, I am now unfavorably regarded as the "Queen of Soup", as this is the meal I am consistently able to make skillfully, in appropriate proportions and with limited means, with relative skill. Just a short time ago, I spent an hour in the grocery store trying to figure out a meal I could prepare for under $10, without shortchanging on the portions.

For Christmas, I'm lucky enough to have been at my job for 5 years, just long enough to qualify for my first holiday bonus above $25 and my anniversary bonus of $100. This way I don't have to choose between a few gifts for my children and essentials like rent and food, and I don't have to consent to my oldest son's braces being removed, because I wouldn't have been able to proceed with the corresponding oral surgery to advance the treatment he needs to correct a genetic defect.

As for myself, I haven't bought a piece of new clothing for a year and a half, as I've been blessed with some hand-me-downs from a co-worker and I more often than not, only eat one meal a day--soup or a cheap noodle bowl. My brother and his family are the only close family members that I have in the state in which I live and I haven't been able to afford to travel the 2 hours to see them since the spring.

Yet, I still feel lucky. I'm lucky that the company I work for has always been adverse to credit. For the most part, they operate on a cash basis; therefore they are not feeling a credit pinch and pressured to reduce growth or downsize. Anything can happen, but I don't wake up every single morning with an urgent sense that this is the day I could lose my job, and thus forfeit my glamourous paycheck to paycheck existence. My children are healthy and relatively happy. I feel lucky in that regard.

It wasn't all that long ago when I had a controlling, abusive, alcoholic husband who squandered away our stability and I supported my children on a $50/week budget. And that was during the prosperous Clinton years. To this day, I know of people who exist in far worse situations with even less resources.

So, as bad as the economy is (and it is bad), I can't help to think, maybe for the sake of preserving my own sanity, how much worse it could be, and how much worse it is for those with even less than myself. Just my thoughts...

You are amazing. These posts are amazing too. Here we are in difficult times with grim forecasts and yet hope for our future is alive and well. Thank you all for sharing.

Last October I left my job and made a career change to sales. Within 6 months they eliminated my position. So as of April 1, I was out of work, or as I liked to refer to it, a free man! Well, nobody rides for free. Jobs are scarce, but I have an interview Monday, so I am optimisitic. I wanted to refer to that first because my gripe is my 401k from the first job. Not having any contributions since leaving my 3rd quarter value represents nothing but performance, so there is a clear indication of what has happened. I lost a third of my "savings" there.

What we should scream to our stupid neighbors is that a privitized social security system will lead to this kind of triple-decimation. I hope we have memories of this the next time Republicans suggest privitization. In the end, though, I am grateful I have what's left. I am optimistic the market will recover before I retire, and there is that interview on Monday. So it may be Merry Christmas for me after all.

I wish the same to you, Amelie, and all the readers here at TPM. Got hope?

My wife and I both work for the same semiconductor company in manufacturing. They have laid off all contract labor and have shut down the plant for 22 straight days during the holidays. I am not looking forward to what we are gonna learn when we come back. But as long as we have each other, my wife, son and I will make it through.

Perhaps your topic of economic uncertainty and apprehension about the future is one reason why I've written so tediously about losing my house to a hurricane four years ago. Because the real danger, whether from losing a house or a job, is not necessarily in the immediacy of the moment; rather, it is that if anything else goes wrong, it can trigger a serial domino collapse of financial, emotional and psychological resources that may finally become insurmountable.

It's happening to my neighbor, today. I will spend this weekend helping her pack to move -- with nowhere to go, for the foreseeable future, but home to extended family.
My neighbor is forty, attractive, well-educated and professional; until last week, she was the upbeat, can-do Admissions Director at the school where I teach. I watched her nearly kill herself over the past year and a half to meet the head count target of the budget pencil pushers -- including pulling off the impossible feat of recruiting twelve new students for mid-year admission in January.

Her reward? A bonus? A week's vacation? Words of praise? None of the above. Instead, last Friday at 4pm, on the same day the last tuition check was received, she was summarily fired. Because the pencil pushers have decided her lesser-paid assistant now has enough training to do the job and my neighbor's salary can be applied elsewhere in the budget. But worse that that -- and this is where serial problems in the future begin to line up -- to keep her medical insurance coverage until June, she was coerced into signing a letter saying she was resigning, so that the bastards will not have to contribute to unemployment insurance. Because she was so afraid to be without medical coverage at all, she signed. And now the domino pattern of disaster begins: from now on, an apparently cavalier, mid-year "resignation" will be on her record, which may well affect her chances of getting a similar job elsewhere.

I've been out of substantial work for a little more than a year. We've been lucky enough to have savings, and and inheritance, and in-laws worth oodles of money. So no one has gone hungry, no creditors have called, and I don't think it will ever come to that. But the year has done terrible, and I think irreversible and unrecoverable damage to my marriage. The barbs are coming pretty regularly these days -- especially the holidays -- and our mutual bitterness has gotten potent. My self-esteem is at an all-time low. It was not a great marriage before hand, but I fear -- hell, I know -- that she will never forgive me for this year, no matter what success follows. This will be the first year in a decade I haven't cleared six figures, and, compared to some of the other things I've read here, that's a pretty petty complaint. But the emotional and personal affects are real, too, if less dramatic.

Thanks for the forum.