Down a third

I looked at my 401k statement this morning. My accounts are down roughly a third from the start of the year, and I invest conservatively for someone in my age group. Sometimes math can be hard for me to put my head around, so I looked at how long it would take for me to recover this 'lost' value through growth. Assuming I get returns similar to what I got in the years before this stock market crash, it will be 2014 before the losses are recovered (8% gain year over year).

The reason I'm writing this down is because I often get a bit angry, writing my congressman and senators demanding to know what's up with 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money being gifted to people that trashed my savings and ranting to friends about the awful extortion that took place. So I wanted to try to form coherent thought about the issue, and ask that people realize that when I go on and on about this, it's because I see 6 years of my future lost because of the stupidity and greed of wall street. The stories about what was being 'invested' in and what was being traded and sold makes me think that those people are possibly crazy and most likely dangerous.

It's not like I can do anything about it, other than write and make sure I vote for people that vote the same way I would of. But it's not like when I was a kid and putting your money in a bank savings account will actually do anything. Hell, even ING isn't paying interest that's worth a damn. Why should they, when they can just borrow money from the government at 1%? They don't need my money to back their loans. People bemoan American's lack of savings, but what motivation do I have to save anything?