State of the Union

"Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone…"

"There must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live."

"Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort…when there is no vision the people perish…"

"…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Excerpts from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's State of the Union address, March 3, 1933.

The state of the Union today is unsettled.

The immediate source of our unease is the economic and emotional impact of the financial atomic blast of 9/15, which continues to spread around the nation like radioactive fallout. On the numbers front, economists say we are witnessing the greatest destruction of wealth in U.S. history. The stock market continues to swoon (in only thirteen months all the gains  investors  made  in