Last fall, I wrote about my Senior Concerns and because my fears have only gotten worse, I am going to repeat them in another post. The markets since 2000 have been devastating a generation. Many seniors lost a large percentage of their investments when the markets crumbled from 2000-2003 and I doubt they rushed back in to participate in the four year rally that ended in 2007. The current crisis is even worse. Home prices are declining. Each time the Fed cuts rates, we are severely cutting into the incomes retirees make on Certificates of Deposit and other fixed income investments. Meanwhile, inflation and the weakening dollar is making their expenses for food, heating and medical care difficult to handle. All that is terrible and yet, it might seem that many of them can rely on pensions or cash held in money market mutual funds. As I have written here in the past, I question the true value of assets in those funds and I hope they do not worsen. Politicians can claim that the stimulus plan they already approved or the new stimulus plan they are working on will help everyone out. The words “too little…too late” are extremely applicable here. Nothing they can do will be sufficient. How many $600 checks will seniors need to compensate for the impacts our Fed policy has had? Our social security and medicare/medicaid programs were already a financial disaster before the credit crisis arrived. I fear the short and long term effects from current problems have provided them a deathblow. The Fed can do all it wants to stimulate the economy and even if it saves jobs for many citizens, it cannot save jobs for people that are already retired. The Treasury can bail out as many subprime borrowers as they want, but I wonder how many seniors were the cause of the mortgage mess. So what to do? As this devastation continues, please consider the needs of your older family members and neighbors. The government is making the situation worse for them so we should not simultaneously rely on the government to make it better.