I use to say that America is spending her children’s future and they will have to pay for our sins in their time. Little did I imagine that the time we have to pay is NOW and not in our children’s future. Never mind the fact that all our financial institutions are in peril; the big three auto companies, the backbone of industrial America, are facing bankruptcy; and the national unemployment rate has hit high unseen in decades. The financial crisis I have been writing about in my earlier articles has finally hit home. I found out today that my Harvard pension will  reduce payout to me next year by 25%. Sure, it will be painful but I’ll survive! And I am probably relatively better off than most Americans living in retirement. The pain to the rest of the Nation will be much worse. Who knows how much worse it will become. Let us hope at this point part of the problem is basically psychological rather than fundamental in the short term. In the long term we still need deep reform and changing our national habit.