I made several now face-to-face friends after meeting them on Twitter

The economy is going to get very bad and it won't even get turned around for a couple more years.

As Buffet, the rich one, said "The recession will be far worse than eveyone expects".

Thank everyone that you know that took out one of those Liar Loans to help cause this mess!

Well, there were banks which developed, offered, and sold the financial products you now call "Liar Loans". And those banks did so in plain sight of governmental institutions supposed to do checks and balances. The whole system obviously didn't work as intended, so I doubt that blaming the customers will help much in learning from the mistakes that were made.

The amounts must be for programmers instead of real engineers, because the Embedded Software Engineers in USA that I know are making $90K to $120K direct, and some contractors are making upwards of $140K to $180K a year, which is around $70 to $90 per hour. Heck I know some very specialized Embedded Software Engineers charging over $100 per hour.

How about benefits...

How much is health insurance worth per year? I've worked at 2 companies where I didn't have to pay a dime for my health insurance.

How about matching 401K, some places are matching dollar for dollar or even up to $2 per dollar.