THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

I thought I would take some time to reflect on what has been happening in the world.

The United States made history when we elected our new president on November 4th. Barack Obama, the first ever African-American, was chosen to lead our country.

The housing economy has been in a slump locally and worldwide. Locally, home prices have been on a decline for the past 18 months forcing many homeowners to go into foreclosure or just simply their homes value is not worth what they paid for it. The good news??... we think the market will be stable within the next 8-12 months from now. FYI, "stable" is being used very loosely..

In the U.S., the Labor Department's monthly jobs report Friday morning showed that the economy shed 240,000 jobs in October, bringing the year's total job losses to 1.2 million. The unemployment rate climbed from 6.1 percent to 6.5 percent, the highest it has been since March 1994.

Idaho unemployment rose half a percentage point from April to May 2008, to 3.6 percent. That compared to 2.7 percent in May 2007. Last month’s unemployment rate was the highest since November 2005.

The escalating cost of living – especially for food and energy – pushed more people into the labor force looking for jobs to supplement household budgets at a time when employers are curbing expenditures to cope with the rapidly slowing economy. The good news is that gas prices have been coming down and we are now paying around $2.55/gallon!

The stock market... yesterday had the biggest fall in points since 1987. The past 3 months have been very volitale for the NASDAQ.

I hate to be such a downer with the news, but it's important to know as a nation where we came from.. and where we're headed.