I Can't Wait To Retire

I remember right before 9/11 the hot button issue was retirement and George W was pushing for the employees to contribute the money into a self maintained low tax financial plan like a 401k letting the businesses off the hook. The dot.com era was in full speed ahead. Jobs were plenty and I was working in Software Quality Assurance for MCI. I had a nice little nest egg that didn't include my stock options which at their peak were valued at about $70,000. Financially I was on the right path. I was about 30 years old at the time and I was married.
         Then the signs started to appear. First it was Enron. The least offensive thing they did
 was sell us back our own power at a higher price. Enron was the first domino to fall. Shortly afterwards, I woke up and read about the guy who had just bought MCI for 40 billion, Bernnie Ebbers, had been caught lying about the companies books. And within a day and a half the stock fell from $70 a share to being removed from The Nasdaq because it fell below one dollar. The stock market soon followed..
 I lost my job as did a lot of my co-workers at MCI and around the country. I was unemployed for over a year and this was just after a divorce. I sent out over 3000 job applications that year and not one interview. Tough times. To pay my rent I withdrew my 401k bit by bit until it was gone. All of my money was gone. I had to file for bankruptcy.
      The economy finally started to pick up in 2003 and I found a job in a steel mill. I was able to start saving again and I started another 401k. I was also able to start a nest egg again. I don't know why I even bothered. Little did I know that the next crushing blow was already on the way. And it was way worse than the first one. Right now I'm on unemployment living check to check.
     All we did as a nation by accepting the idea of using an investment account for our retirement was give the criminals (big business) more of our money to lose. There is a reason that they say buy precious metals to get thru a bad economy. Because it is a physical property of yours that regardless of what the dollar is worth still has value.
     So this is how I see it. Business pushed Washington with money (outlaw lobbying) to change laws ( i.e. the banking deregulation in 1999) allowing banks to rip us of because of no oversight or checks and balances remained in place. The bailout is going to cost each of us $30,000. Thousands of families lost their homes, had their credit ruined, were forced out on the street with most of them losing a couple of hundred thousand dollars in worth. A complete disregard for who they screwed. And it's going to happen again because WE ARE DUMB ASSES! No other reason than we are dumb asses. If we aren't then tell me what we have done to prevent this from happening again? Not  a damn thing. It's happened before to us with the savings and loan scandal. Did we do anything then? No.
        Now that I know there is no chance for me to have a happy retirement, I'm just going to become a financial drain on the country along with all the others in the same boat because we won't have money to pay for health care and old people get sick. And you know who we will be looking at for help? The government. So warn your kids that they better start saving money but to be cautious. The last place you want to have your money is with somebody who doesn't know how to handle it. And nobody handles it worse than the banks.