HOW WILL WE BE AFFECTED?

September 21, 2008

How will we be affected?

By Jenifer B. McKim Globe Staff

Melissa Hamlet worries that the stock market's wild swings will mean fewer potential buyers for her home. Restaurant owner Christopher Tocchio fumes that the government isn't holding failing businesses accountable for their reckless decisions. And Mary Vaughan, a recent widow, wonders why government rescues corporate America while she struggles to pay her bills.
"I'm paying enough taxes now, and the taxpayers have to bail these big guys out?" she said.
Anger, fear, and shock about the Wall Street meltdown are percolating through conversations along Massachusetts' main streets. A whirlwind week of unprecedented government intervention to prop up the nation's financial system seemed to confirm people's worst fears:

The economy is in peril and recovery is far off.

Seemingly overnight, nearly everyone felt poorer - homes lost value, 401(k) investments were battered, and jobs, for some, were in jeopardy.

Nan Sabel, 56, a Bedford certified financial planner, said that as stock indexes dipped and surged last week, her office was flooded with calls from clients wondering what to do. Even money market mutual funds, which are among the safest places to park cash, spooked investors when some funds reported losses - and the government responded with a costly plan to insure such fund deposits.

"I have had people come out of the woodwork," said Sabel, a principal of the Women's Financial Network. "People have called me about their money market. They want to review their whole portfolio. I'm hearing a lot of nervousness in their voice, people calling and saying, `Am I OK?' I haven't heard that in years."

Hamlet, 36, and her husband, Jason, 33, have been trying to sell their Whitman house for two months. Until they do, their dreams of a larger home are on hold. They recently lowered the price to $329,900 from $339,000 and held an open house - neither tactic sparked interest. Last week's barrage of bad financial news only heightened their stress.

"The feedback we are getting from buyers is not that the house is overpriced, but that there are a lot of bank-owned homes in Whitman," Hamlet said.

Tocchio, who owns the restaurant Church in Boston's Fenway section, is afraid people will stop dining out because of the financial uncertainty.

"Everyone is in a panic," he said. "Froma personal standpoint, my sales are going to suffer and I've already seen it."

The father of two said he understands why the government stepped in to save mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but he's growing increasingly frustrated by government bailouts, which now include a proposed $700 billion to buy up bad mortgage-related assets.

"From a taxpayer standpoint, why is it my responsibility to bail these companies out? It's wrong," said Tocchio, 38. "The CEOs of the companies should be held accountable."

Vaughan, a 57-year-old widow, wonders why massive companies get help while people like her are left to fend for themselves. Her money problems started when her husband became ill a few years ago. They refinanced their home three times, but her husband's $1,000-a-month Social Security check was not enough to keep up with payments. Now she is on the brink of foreclosure.
"Nobody helps us out and we have to bail out these guys that have lived a good life for years," Vaughan said. "I'm even up to my eyeballs in credit card debt."

The economy is affecting 31-year-old Benay Ames of Braintree in a different way. She said she has a secure job in healthcare, and her husband, a stone mason, is working, too.

But he just lost his bid for membership in the Bricklayers and Masons Union - it can't find work for new members because of the weakened job market, Ames said.

"What angers me is the people responsible for this are making half a million a year, and it's not going to hurt them," she said. "Yet as a taxpayer in the middle class I'm going to be the one who pays for it."

With so much changing on the economic front last week, many decided the best strategy was to do nothing. For instance, Jessica Walsh, 30, said she and her husband, Matthew Judd, 32, have opted to stay put in Hopkinton rather than risk a move that would require them to change jobs.
If others adopt a similar outlook toward home-selling, it could hurt Walsh's income - she's a real estate agent.

"Right now it is not the time to move your life and change anything big," she said. "My priorities have switched. Because of everything that is going on, the stability in the job is the most important thing."

Retiree Jack Osgood, 83, also isn't planning any major life changes.

He said he has lived through far worse economic times - the Great Depression. And while the world was a much different place then, Osgood said, greed remains a powerful force.

Like other investors, the Roxbury resident has recently lost money in his mutual funds and on his shares of investment bank Morgan Stanley, whose stock has been under pressure.

Still, he said, the retirement income he earns from investments in the "low six figures" is plenty, and he is confident his funds will eventually recover. But perhaps not soon enough.

"I just may not live long enough to reap that," he said.

By the end of the week, most people far from the center of the financial maelstrom were left with many more questions than answers, and mounting concerns about what happens next.

"It's so secretive, so you're not sure why all this happened," said Rachel Weinstein, a homemaker in Waltham. "The sky's falling. We saved it. But why did the sky fall?"
Kimberly Blanton of the Globe staff contributed to this report.


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