This week our esteemed chairman, Ben Bernake, sat in front of congress and said essentially that we're at the tail end of the recession. Specifically he points to a recovery later this year. He also said that "we are in much better shape than we were in September and October." Here's my gripe.

First, this is the same guy who admittedly misjudged the severity of the housing crisis to begin with. This is the guy who said he didn't expect the housing crisis to become a systemic economic problem. Second, I wonder if the 2 million plus Americans sent packing to stand in the unemployment line since October of last year would agree. Do those who have lost their careers agree that the economic slide is lessening? Thirdly, Bernake was making these comments at nearly the same time that the housing industry numbers were released. Worse declines in some odd 10+ years. This is his job, his career. He supposed to be the best economist in the country. He's supposed to know the most about our economy.

I know for fact that I'm not the only American wondering if our elected and appointed officials know what the hell they're doing. I can't remember the last time they got it right. It's been a series of mis-steps for the past 4 years. Still, I'm optimistic that the bleeding is beginning to slow. So let's say later this year things are better with the economy. Let's take a look at where I'll be. And once again, I know I'm not the only one out there.

My house here in Atlanta will still be worth $35,000 less than what I paid for it in 2005. I literally can't afford to move. My career will still be on shaky ground. I'm now doing the work of 3 people since my company laid off a chunk of the IT staff in February. And I'm willing to bet that I'll still be paying for the training that my company used to pay for since they know that I know I'm lucky just to have a job.

So what am I doing? Well I'm sure as hell not sitting on my arse waiting for the other shoe to drop. I started training for my CCNA certification. I figure if I am going to be sacrificed by my company to the god of higher margins I'm going to be as well equipped as I can be to get another job. Truthfully it's long overdue. I've been a network engineer for 4 years now and didn't really have the urgency to get additional certifications since I was sitting pretty comfortably in my current job. Maybe ever cloud does have a silver lining. So we'll see. I got this service from preplogic.com where I can get all their Cisco CCNA exam training and then trade it in for a new exam once I'm done. I'm sort of hoping that I'll end of going after some more of my MCSE exams or maybe some VMWare stuff after my CCNA certification and maybe even some new Server 2008 stuff, although I'm not sure I have the stamina for all of it. Wouldn't hurt my career so we'll see. Apparently I get all the certification training I can eat for two years. I've been burned before by IT training. Let's hope these PrepLogic guys are a little better. So far so good. I'm very happy with the training and their customer service has been nearly perfect.

I've also refinanced my mortgage. I had a 6.25 rate from Wells Fargo that I got down to 5.675 with GMAC. The horrible part is that I had to pay $14,000 out of my 401k to cover the 20% thanks to the housing drop. The people at GMAC were awesome. Very friendly. Gone are the days of "no doc" loans so it was more of a hassle than the original loan several years ago. However, GMAC was very helpful and they did as much of the heavy lifting for me. I suppose I would say they made the best out of a bad situation. I did have to pay a slightly higher rate because I wanted a no closing cost mortgage. Bottom line is that I figured another $55 a month was better than $2000 out of pocket up front. Seemed like a fair trade. Also, got out of my second mortgage as well. Nice to have that burden lifted.

Here's hoping my combined effort to bolster my training and certification career moves with my lower mortgage payments will get me through this. Here's hoping Bernake is right and we're on the tail end of this thing. Here's hoping.