It’s Labor Day and I am here to help you find ways to spend less, save more and take advantage of investment. Plus the Federal Reserve and Chairman Ben Bernanke meet in Wyoming and the outcomes should concern all of us. And as usual, providing personal finance advice, real estate advice and consumer advice with Ilyce Glink on the Clark Howard Show September 3, 2012 on WSB Radio.

It’s Labor Day and I am working like so many of you. I am partnering with you as we look for ways to help you spend less, save more and avoid getting ripped off. Because locating ways to save money and promote investment is more critical now than ever before.

I want to start by talking about what went on in Jackson Hole, Wyoming this week. Every year at the end of the summer, the Federal Reserve, led by Ben Bernanke, puts on a monetary symposium out West. The idea is that this is the time when the Fed leaves the insulated world of Washington D.C. and Wall Street and gets out of town. The meeting is considered to be the high point of the summer investment season in terms of providing an understanding of the nation’s financial direction in the second half of the year.

I wasn’t there of course, but I have been reading along like the rest of us and here’s my takeaway: we’re in trouble. We must be right at the knife’s edge of collapsing back into recession because what came out of the symposium was a promise from the Federal Reserve to start buying more bonds. The move is bound to send the stock market up and the hope is that it will create jobs too.

Ben Bernanke commented in not so many words that the trillions the Fed has already pumped into the economy have staved off a depression. So my question is this: is this sustainable? Can the Federal Reserve’s investment continue to keep us afloat? What will it take to push us forward or back definitively?

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