I don't usually pay too much attention to what goes on in the stock market. It's usually one of those things that my father tries to tell me about, and that I tend to turn off my ears to until he's finished talking. There are just too many ifs, ands, buts, and maybes for a very grounded and practical person like me. It doesn't matter how much money I happen to have...as long as it's safe in my own bank account, I feel just fine about it. I don't need to put it in the hands of some seemingly capable stock broker and watch him loose it slowly in the madness that is the stock market. In thinking back about the stock market, the closest exposure I had to it (and actually the greatest interest since it was fake money) was when I was in the seventh grade in talented and gifted class. Our teacher was famous for introducing some pretty neat things into the class, since it was our last year of middle school...and in my particular year, she decided to spend a month with us participating in a virtual stock market game sponsored by one of our local banks. It was a pretty neat idea, but the way that we approached it was pretty haphazard. My teacher approached our 'assignment' as if we already had a pretty decent understanding of the process, and that, if we didn't, we would learn along the way. That's all well and good I suppose, but in a month's time, it really didn't do us much good. The testament to that is me sitting here and telling you that I know very little about the stock market and how it works.

Anyways, enough about me and my lack of stock market know-how...what happened to the stock market this week? It's just as if someone pulled a plug and everything started to go downhill. My usual exposure to stock market related things is whatever headlines happens to be featured on either cnn dot com or msnbc dot come, or whatever world news site I happen to be looking through. I recall that a lot of what I've heard over the past long while have been very positive things about records being set and the like. All of the sudden, the stock market has a few bad days and people are literally freaking out. It seems like everyone and their grandmother is pulling out their "i told you so"'s and their "i knew that it wasn't going to last"s. What's the deal with that? I understand that the drop over the week has been the biggest in a long time, and it's one that has been mirrored in other worldwide markets besides the NASDAQ, NYSE, and BlueChips...but still...let's not jump the gun. I guess that it's not a good thing, but a lot worse has happened. I've read headlines expressing sentiments that this vast departure from the successes of the past several months may indicate errors during that time or it may signal a long-coming recession in America. The latter sounds like it's a little drastic for my tastes. One thing I do know about the stock market is that it fluctuates every time Alan Greenspan sneezes, so maybe we need to ride this one out.

Sure, I'll bet a lot of you out there are shaking your heads and me and calling me a naive linguist...and maybe you're right. However, I would wager that there are a lot of other Americans out there who feel similarly apathetic about whatever happened this week in the stock market. Very few Americans actually understand what these types of changes in the stock market, let alone the daily up and down fluctuations that we see, really mean for the economy or for America as a whole. Therefore, I don't feel so bad expressing my naivety to all of you about the situation, because I'm imagining that the majority of you are in the same boat as I am. Of course, maybe I'm wrong, and if I am tell me about it. Maybe this could be your opportunity to say a little something to me. I'd love to learn about why I might be wrong or why I should pay better attention to what is going on. I just haven't been motivated to learn, since I don't see how this is directly affecting me.