Worst January ever on Wall Street.

The DOW will finish the month right at 8000... and you know what? If it wasn't for the big spending packages in Washington DC and ongoing pursuit of the economy by Obama's team, the DOW would be somewhere around 6500 right now. The real economy is taking a nosedive - the financial sector would have been wiped out by now without the TARP giveaway.

I'm not an economist, I'm just a lowly mortgage banker. But it doesn't take an economist to see how bad it has gotten. So we will spend, spend, spend to get through this mess. And when a light finally does appear at the end of the tunnel, then the government budget will collapse. Since the base for the central banks of the world is/has become the budget servicing of interest on US Treasury bonds, we can expect an even worst collapse to take place just as we recover from all this.

Wish I could say it all looks wonderful, but to be honest, maybe it is time for the guys with the signs that read, "the end is near" to hit the streets again.