Having progressed happily with my 3-month bucket-list trip - like flowing down a river - I've now arrived back home in San Diego, California.

My thanks to those who missed me enough to ask where I was and send greetings. And my apologies for not publishing eNews and updating JimPinto.com weblogs as often as usual. While traveling, my brain and body were heavily engaged in other directions.

Perhaps that'll add to my objectivity as I get back to digesting all that I have experienced.

I left San Diego when gasoline was over $4 per gallon, and returned at less than $2. I left America when the DOW stock index was just dropping below 10,000, saw it plummet to 7,500 and then settle nervously above 8,000 after infusions of billions and promises of trillions more.

I saw the pundits prognostications that this had not happened since 2000, then 1992, then 1982, then the 1960's - and finally the great depression of the 1930's. There's an obsession with rear-view-mirror analysis, with no recognition that the world has changed so much, making it useless to look backwards.

I left when the Bush Administration was still stubbornly calling the decline a "recession" until the world finally recognized that this was something never before experienced. And they kept throwing money to bailout banks, and then the automakers - they couldn't think of anything else to do.

After the "dotcom" bust came the housing boom fuelled by "liar-loans"

and banking excesses which were now being "bailed out". Credible financial observers have been forecasting this collapse for more than a decade, but no one wants to hear bad news. And the profligate practices progressed.

Europe and most other parts of the world are also in recession, as foreign investments fled and their markets plunged. I actually gained with my dollar exchanges when the British pound and the Indian Rupee plummeted.

My own view is that this is indeed an inflection point, an event as serious as a financial 9/11, a serious break from the past, a wake-up call from the illusions of "the good old days".

It's good for America, and the world, to get back to basic bedrock concepts such as hard-work, productivity, knowledge, innovation, competition, discipline, education, friendship, loyalty, patriotism.

Stop for a moment to add to the list the things that YOU care about.

The world economy - Bad, or worse?

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12381879

Economists see longest recession since WW II:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5090QL20090110

The world banking system sham:

http://jimpinto.com/enews/nov4-2008.html#1