I'll be the first to admit I know little about Wall Street. Yet, from what I have been hearing, I do believe it is more serious than a lot of people might think. There is no easy fix, purchasing homes and getting loans in general is going to be rough. We see it already with job losses, food prices.

I was listening to a Public Radio station the other day and they were taking calls from everywhere. Let's see if I remember this correctly. Some guy who lived in Boston and owned a car dealership (have no idea what kind of dealership) called. He said that his customers are having a hard time getting loans. He told of one lady who had "good" credit (not excellent but good with no credit card debt, etc). He figured she'd qualify easily.

He said that the loan company called him and told him that thy'd give that lady the loan IF in the event that they had to reposssess the car, the owner of the dealership would pay the first $1,800 of the loan. He said in the 20 some years he'd been in the business, he never heard of such a thing.