Tom, this is like the ending in Atlas Shrugged. It's NY going dark behind them as the plane flies out to Colorado.
If one really believes in free markets, one has to support the collapse of dead companies. The old trees are felled and new healthy ones take their place.
Did YOU read the UCLA article I linked to about FDR prolonging the depression by TEN years because of his legislation? That's what causes long depressions - price fixing and government intervention. Hoover was right. The market and economy would have corrected itself in about two years after he left office.
Sure stocks are tanked. Retirement funds are obliterated and everyone will be affected by this depression. But mark my words, it will be a much smaller depression than the great depression. In 1929 the rest of the world was not as developed and now the US market is only a facet of the puzzle, not the entire thing.
The US has been losing it's real value as the dollar's buying power dropped for decades alongside an artificial inflation rate. The two-income household should be an option - not a necessity. The prices of goods are completely out of line with personal income. As prices of real goods come crashing down alongside the stocks, this is a long overdue adjustment. Food, housing & transportation have been in a bubble and millions have ALREADY been suffering and living miserable lives because of this bubble. And why? Because folks circumvented and short circuited the free market.
You're like Rearden or Dagny hoping to save a system that was not worth saving. I'm like D'Anconia who realizes the corrupt need to sink in their own mire so they no longer have influence over the markets or lead us into a "husband & wife - both with two jobs" economy just to afford a house payment and a leased car.
If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do? I don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him? To shrug
It will be painful, but try to remember the depression helped make possible the golden era of industrial, economic and technological progress in 1948-1970. Today's masses are robotized, pacified and the hours, days & weeks of their lives are wasted in a manner that would be repugnant to the go-getters of the early & mid 20th century. Our schools are collapsing and capitalism is a dirty word in the halls of learning. That too will change as folks get back down to the basic realities of making themselves WORTH something to their fellow men.
That's what it's all about Tom.
Making yourself worth something. Making money and wealth by producing services or goods of objective value.
That's the free market. That's what makes the world go round. When a company ignores objective value - that company must pay the price.
There's no free ride for anyone - regardless of position or title - nor should there be.
PS
Gold & Silver will be good investments right now. As will real goods with tangible objective value. Selling good stocks will be pointless, because the companies, if they're good and have an objective value, will rebound far quicker than the bogus companies whose stocks were carried aloft by the rest and have no objective value.