It's been 5 years since the meltdown. Such an event will probably take 10 years to fix, so we're at the halfway mark in my opinion. Devastated communities all over the place, it's a mess. So cautiously optimistic, i would say. The major indexes only gained about 10% from pre-crash levels, so we're all losing money big time weather we like it or not as it should be 7-8 % per year. The US dollar spiked about 10-12 years ago and for a while it was worth a whole lot of money. Been downhill ever since...