JGS Group

It looks like this past year was a year in which pretty much every last thing has gone awry financially. As a result forcing our usually good US economic condition into the slums and pushing us towards what very realistically wind up becoming the next depression. This is very bad for the majority of us Americans and is quite depressing that it has reached this point of no return.

This giant fiasco began in the subprime mortgage corner of finance. There were dirtbag brokers giving out mortgages to pretty much anyone, you didn’t even have to prove you had the income to actually pay the loan all you had to do was have a mediocre credit history and you were able to get a home. And in many cases a home that you had no business being in.

What was then done with these loans is they were bundled into these security investment packages and sold to offshore investors who were attempting to earn a substantial amount of money. However for them things turned out horribly and they are all going under and losing their money. The greed of these already unnaturally rich folks had gotten the best of them. Now they will suffer the bad problems that are to come.

If all that wasn’t enough now we have basically all the big investment firms on Wall Street either closing down or being bailed out by our tax happy government. This has resulted a big effect on our now current economic problem, placing millions out of work and costing the consumers of America billions in an attempt to soften how terrifying this crisis has become.

This ripple effect has then gone and infected the NASDAQ and we have seen a slowing market ever since. Great numbers of Americans are now scared to invest time and money in fear of sacrificing everything. You might almost say this is somewhat of a domino effect on our market and is causing major suffering and heartache to the average US household. Let’s hope there is something that can be done to save this country.

When I started to think it could not get any worse the retail markets are being greatly badly effected as well. With such a large number of Americans losing jobs and income not a soul is going out and spending hard earned dollars on consumer merchandise which is the backbone of a uptrending economy. Huge sums of small businesses are experiencing the effect from such hard times and will be closing their doors in 2009 as a result.

Almost like throwing out the cat with the bag this recession has now reached the auto market. And we are going to see Detroit in need of a earth shattering bailout in order to keep our American auto market alive and sustainable. If the auto market goes under there goes millions more jobs that will be gone putting another major dent into an already weak economy this will hurt millions.

As a consequence to all this insanity we are going through a credit crunch, which in turn will keep the recession from getting any better, no small businesses will get credit to help them get through these times no one is getting mortgages unless you have an immaculate credit score. The majority of creditors are worried that their predicament will get all the worse and in reality are just not issuing out money.

And alas probably the worst issue for the average US resident is cumbersome credit card debt. We have reached an all time high with unsecured credit card debt. So many families cannot even afford to be on time with their monthly minimum payments and have been going into default in schools. This will greatly effect the credit crunch and obliterate people’s finances completely once and for all.

One of the most reasonable solutions for the standard consumer who is swallowed in debt is debt settlement. This procedure will assist the debtor in saving close to half of what they now owe their creditor and assist them in getting out of debt within a few short years. This is precisely what the majority of America needs right now in such unmanageable times.

Steve Bis is a debt analyst with the USCA, which practices debt relief.

- Steve Bis