Hell on Earth is for the rest of us.

The headlines are full of the the looming "economic disaster" caused in part by the sub-prime lending fraud--"The Sky is Falling!","Markets in Turmoil"--but don't be fooled. It's not our economy they're talking about, but their economy.

Their economy is the economy of the bankers, financiers, hedge funds and investment firms, and their economy isn't suffering any more than a self-induced muscle spasm, which will disappear with a nice "money massage" from our government.

Our economy is the real disaster. Our economy is the one in which the rest of us live-- the one with decreasing jobs, increasing unemployment, higher costs for every basic necessity-food, energy and health care. The one will lowering income and a higher debt burden. The one with lowering educational standards and increasing hunger and homelessness. The one with a collapsing infrastructure and environmental degradation. Our economy is the one that heading into a death spiral, taking our quality of life and hopes for the future along with it, with little hope of recovery because the occasional bones thrown our way have already had the marrow sucked out. The one that is a stressful Hell on Earth for those struggling to cope.

And our economy, the one not mentioned in the headlines, is precisely the one created by their economy.

But there is no Hell on Earth awaiting these financiers and tycoons. It's a place they'll never visit--it's just an unimportant by-product of their activities--a place for the little people to stay, out of the way while the rich accumulate uncountable wealth. They don't care about their actions because they are immune to the consequences. There is no Hell on Earth for these people, because there is no law enforced, no governance, no check on their power and control. When their frauds and predations reach a crisis point (as now) and begin to affect their personal wealth, they have only to turn to the government(which they control) to give them enough tax breaks to ease their discomfort, and to the Federal Reserve(which they control) to increase the money supply to protect their personal fortunes, and to the Supreme Court (which they control) to protect them against any legal liability for the Hell on Earth they created for the rest of us.

The closest any of them will get to Hell on Earth will be to view it from afar, like Bush flying over New Orleans looking for business opportunities.