Confused post

I was planning on writing a post about another topic, paying ourselves, but I decided not too. I am a little too distracted to do that today. I have been sitting at work for the last couple of days clicking on the internet news and finance sites compulsively(while doing my job) at regular intervals to find out what is going on in the world of finance. Banks are collapsing, the Dow is tanking, our retirement accounts are losing money...etc. It is one huge mess. I am fully aware of business cycles and how recessions come and go, but this seems different. In the past they seemed to be part of the normal course of things and while recessions were a drag, they were nothing to panic about. This one worries me more than the others because there seems to be no control at all over what is happening. The Treasury Dept reassures us every few days that things are fine and we are ready for the upswing, then another shoe drops. The Bear Stearns bailout was supposed to stop the free fall. It didn't. The Fannie and Freddie bailout was then supposed to fix the problem they said. It didn't. Now Lehman Brothers is gone and AIG is in trouble. AIG only needs $75 billion to right itself. Oh, is that all? Let me look under my couch for that..no worries. Geesh! I don't pretend to be smart enough to know where all this is leading, but I have real worries. I bet you do too.