Great thread, I'm glad it was started..and depressed at what I have read as I have wondered how it has been affecting our industry.
I'm lucky to be where I am, although we are tight, we are close to a major military base and our community has many retirees. On the other hand, I think it is only a matter of time before things get substantially worse.
To the OP (and any others); I only have one piece of good advice...Stop watching TV news!! The main stream media is owned by the corporations and banks who got us into this mess!! But they generally just get the news wrong anyways, have you ever done a big call and than read about it in the news paper or watched it on the news? That should be evidence enough.
Use tv (if you must) as only one piece of the puzzle, I suggest getting the rest of the pieces from places like this, or other blogs, forums ect.. The Market Ticker
forums is a good place to start if you want to read about how messed up our economy is atm. A lot of professional traders post there and it is not partisan (They tend to hate everyone equally lol). Fedupusa.org (also a part of tickerforums) is a good place to read about upcoming protests like the tea parties if you want to get more involved (which I personally encourage, it IS our tax money after all).
To the newbies
hang in there, whatever the economy does there will always be a demand for us in one way or another. You might have to think about moving to find a job, but I still see and hear of a lot of demand. (For paramedics at least).