Four conversations so far today. The phone rings, chatter in email, instant messages...

We're off the bottom. The market's turning around. Time to buy. Everyone checking with everyone else to see if we're all thinking the same way. We're not.

Too good to be true? It is. This thing will turn around when nobody's interested in picking up the phone to chat about a possible market bottom. When nobody cares, it's time to invest again. Until then it's all a feint.

In case you somehow missed it, we just had another round of bailouts for the largest banks and insurance companies. Many question this decision. Why bail out these banks and insurance companies who made all the bad loans and investments in the first place, goes the argument. Let them fail. The scavengers will pick up what's left and we'll go from there.

Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? The problem is that last part. The part where we "go from there".

In every conversation I have these days people worry about their investments and the markets. The economy's killing my investments. My portfolio's down. This economy had better turn around soon or my retirement will never happen. There are many variations on that theme. You've probably been hearing it too. You may even have a version you've been using yourself. It's easy to worry.

Things are tough all over. Nobody's immune. If you've lost money (and you no-doubt have) you're neither alone in your losses nor in your quest to determine when things will turn around.

As for that quest, I can tell you this: Things won't turn around soon. We're on a staircase heading downward and we'll be on it for quite a while. We'll have bad days with big drops in all the indexes and they'll be answered only by moderately good days with gains that don't make up. Mixed in among these will be maddening go-nowhere days where money churns from sector to sector in a quest for value.

Now that we're past the holidays, and we have all the election and campaigning behind us and with the upcoming inauguration. I'm anxious to see what's ahead.

My money says we will have more volatility as optimism and hope are replaced by the reality of the economic downturn. Of course, smart investors aren't overly concerned with volatility, because they know to sit tight and weather the storm.

I also think there's a lot more downside to this market.

This is a different kind of downturn. Many investors have never seen anything like this before. This isn't like the pullback in the year 2000. That downturn was all about returning stock prices to realistic levels from unrealistic valuations. The economic dip that accompanied it was quickly absorbed by our relatively robust economy.

The banks and investment firms, housing and mortgage, the automakers. Today's headlines have the steel industry lining up at the public trough for a handout. Their message is more simple and straightforward than the others though. Their message is only this: "Buy our product"

They want your tax dollars, and what loans they can leverage, to be spent on building projects such as bridges and public buildings. They're turning to the public sector to spend our way out of this economic downturn.

This news is as revealing as it is scary.

First off, Merry Christmas. Belatedly. I'm a whole day late.

Secondly, it's been about a year now we've been in this recession. We'll be in it for another year. I might make that same statement next year.

Did we expect to be able to spend beyond our means forever? (I say "we", I mean in the collective. I didn't expect we could, did you?)

We fueled our economy on the money we had - our paychecks and when they couldn't keep up, our savings, including the savings tied up as equity in our own homes. We then fueled it on money we didn't have - credit card debt and debt backed by hoped-for appreciation in our homes.

How far out on that limb did we think we could go?

Looking back on my careers, all the companies I've worked for and all the great benefits I've earned, I have few regrets. The single one thing I do, however, wish I'd done differently is to have been a more aggressive seller in the stocks of the companies I have worked for.

It's too easy to accumulate stock in your own company. Many companies offer some kind of employee stock purchase plan. Some award stock to employees. Stock options are part of many companies' benefits packages. Does your company have a 401(k) plan? Chances are one of the first investment choices in your company's 401(k) plan is company stock.

Employees nearly always get an employee discount on their company's stock. Who can pass up the chance to buy an asset with appreciation potential at below market price?

I'm always on the prowl for investment ideas. Hardly a day goes by that I don't run across something new and interesting that might be a new trend or idea that will turn into a real money maker. That's probably Peter Lynch's influence. I read his book oh so many years ago and it stuck with me.

Are you a seller or a buyer these days?

With a market drop like yesterdays and the sickening erosion in prices we've been experiencing of late it's hard to imagine many are happy with stocks. Top it off with the hard reality that the dollars you have to invest are worth less now - by about 50% - than they were last year and it sort of makes you want to find a hole to crawl into.

The news is all bad and shows no signs of improvement. This pesky credit crunch brought on by the housing debacle continues to roil the financial industry. Prices are headed up. It costs double just to get to the grocery store and back. Floods in the midwest are sure to put even more upward pressure on food prices. To make matters worse, the dollar's value is miniscule so your savings valued in dollar terms are worth less in real terms.

Invest? Me? Now? You have to be kidding!

Plenty of interesting numbers in the news yesterday.

• Economic growth at a 0.6% annual growth rate
• Consumer spending advancing by 1%
• The Fed's interest overnight interbank lending rate is now 2%

I have to ask, how can anyone not now believe we're in a recession?

Now the question becomes a matter of how long this particular downturn will last. Anyone else think we're in for more than a year of this?