Our dollar is devalued while inflation is robbing the pocket books of consumers and the price of oil has jumped due to speculation (it's gone back down considerably but Hurricane Ike will send the cost of gas back up temporarily). The price of food and everything else has gone up due to the cost of gas to transport it from point A (production) to point B (place of sale). Since the stock market has gone into a major downward spiral, companies have gone under or laid off staff or are simply giving no raises.

Normally banks and bankers hold a lot of the wealth but due to their own asinine practices, they've gone down the drain with the rest of us. So yep, it's gone to the oil companies and is being funneled out of the USA into the oil-rich producers.

The question is, when/how will it end? All things (including economies) seek homeostasis. When that is reaching, it will be over. However, by that time, the wealth (of the US) will have permanently been redistributed. The USA will never again be what it was. Our economic power has been devastated and will never totally recover. We'll be replaced, probably by China.

I don't think the average person in this country will ever again have the wonderful years of financial prosperity that were ours during the Clinton administration.

It started with 9/11, Bush's policies have exacerbated it and no one was watching the store at home. If they'd had any decent economists working for the administration and anyone who would listen them, they should have seen the housing problems coming. I refinanced while everyone else was doing so but I was smart enough to know NOT to take one the variable mortgages. Those are the tools of the devil. Fortunately, the devil went under, too. Unfortunately, he's taking everybody else with him.