My Blog, Your Money

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday.

2008 was certainly a tough year (at least economy-wise).  All the major indexes were down significantly with the Dow Jones down 33.8% (its worst performance since Depression-era 1931), the Nasdaq down 40.6%, and the S&P500 down 38.5%.  Numerous businesses failed including many notable financial institutions and the government stepped in with mind-boggling bailouts and huge rate cuts.  Although all the signs of a recession were there, this was only confirmed in December and was determined to have stretched back to the previous year.

The recession will most likely carry over into this year, but hopefully we’ll see improvement in 2009.