You are so right, Karen. Too often those jobs go overseas, or they are simply abandoned and left to die on the vine by vultures masquerading as venture capitalists. It's a zero sum game in which those at the top win, and workers lose. Repeat those activities a million times and we are talking serious losses. The losers are too busy trying to keep body and soul together, while the winners ride off into the sunset looking for more gold to take.

I live in Houston. Traffic is a mess. Every little shutdown business is opening all over the city. Housing is booming, partly because of interest rates. You can get a mansion here at one fourth the cost of the Eastern shore or California, and everyone is coming here, mostly from California, but from other states as well.

My partner has a dry cleaning business, but business is way down, so she makes most of her money through alterations. Even though her business is in one of the hottest business districts in the city, other dry-cleaning and alteration shops have failed and other businesses that were successful before are failing all around her.

The banks are not lending to small business so that they can expand, upgrade or hire people. Many are having to cut their staffs. I believe that many of the people coming into town lost their jobs and sold their houses. They are starting businesses without any knowledge of how to run a business and are failing miserably. In spite of the apparent prosperity here, the situation is dismal.

The fact is that the stimulus money is not going to infrastructure projects and start up businesses with great promise for the future but into small handouts to the general public for increasing buying power they don't have. The lion's share is going to the banks from the Fed Reserve and the banks are buying up property for future gain and stocks in major companies that continue to outsource and downsize, so the stagnant situation does not improve.

Read Ed Phillips articles for very knowledgeable and practical solutions to the problem that the politicians seem unable to enact. We, the people need to understand that we can't just be successful by opening a business with no knowledge and we can't expect education to get us a good job either. We need to carefully spend our money and save our money in the places where it creates jobs rather than just throw what little we have to spend away.

Ron