I spoke to a female baby-boomer yesterday from Marco Island which is about 15 miles South of Naples, FL who now is rethinking her retirement as she has seen 30 years of hard work and savings cut in half.  She said that the old adage was just buy and hold and eventually you’ll be up was not true anymore as the marlets are back to 1996 levels.  The market peaked in October 2007 and was on a somewhat slow decline until after the election day in November when Obama won.  Since the election on November 4th the S&P 500 is down 36%, sure it was somewhat bad then with a S&P at 1000, but the huge decline over the past few months are literally wrecking retirement accounts.  The scary thing is that the government is now trying to mask pork barrel projects as job creating stimulus programs, but the sad truth is only about 5% of the stimulus bill will actually create shovel ready jobs and some argue it will make the problem worse.

Updated, not to brag but did we call it or what on how terrible the “stimulus” bill would be??  Hear Obama comment on the program 2 years after he signed and pushed for it in this video.

The risk to the markets and our retirement accounts is all this 5 trillion in new spending is simply being charged on a credit card and will have to be paid back.  Politicians may temporarily fool voters, but they cannot fool the markets and Mr. Obama’s charisma is beginning to wear thin as people have to dip into their kids college savings accounts to pay bills.  The dramatic reaction on the markets since Obama won in November is them giving him a resounding no.

Update: Two years later after I wrote this blog all of our hunches were correct on Obama that he is simply in over his head. With real unemployment at 18% the economy is a disaster while the small business owners sit on their hands and choose to not expand and hire because of the fear that has been created in Washington.

I know I’ve gotten a little political this morning but I do have a point on how this relates to long term care insurance and your future long term care needs.  Piling all this pork barrel debt on future generations is selfish and will not bring prosperity and thus unless the Obama administration stops their anti-business policies we’ll see the markets dive further and if were lucky maybe go sideways from here.  Last week Obama announced he was going to raise the capital gains tax rate by 33% taking it from 15 to 20%.  Who does such callus acts in a declining stock market and how does penalizing people encourage private investors to invest capital?  In China they now have a 0% capital gains tax rate to attract foreign investors and since November they have seen a 25% gain in their markets vs. our 36% drop.  Now that I’ve totally depressed you how can you plan to ensure a safe retirement and that your remaining nest-egg will not be whipped out by a long term care stay?

Long Term Care Insurance might be a good fit for the lady I began this blog with and for people who are concerned about the deep drop their retirements accounts have had.  If Obama and his bigger government programs work and I’m wrong (I hope I am), then your accounts will have recovered and you have long term care insurance.  If I’m right however, and the markets tread water for the next few years you’ll have long term care insurance and at least that risk will be protected.  We help people shop the entire long term care insurance market and to find the best deal.  No salesperson at your kitchen tables because we work via the mail, email, and phone.  A much more efficient process our clients have told us.  Fill out the form below and we’ll mail you your quotes.  Thanks for putting up with my rant this morning and reading our LTCtree blog, we really appreciate it.