Crazy economy

The economy is going crazy right now, with stock prices plummeting on healthy companies, as quickly as unhealthy ones.

In a lot of ways, the crazy world of subprime mortgages, and the subsequent drop in house prices and then the destruction of the assets associated with the subprime homes has evidently caused the entire economy to fall down. It's puzzling on a number of fronts, because I and everyone I care to ask, got normal, safe loans. What portion of loans out there are truly in the 'at risk' category, and where does my normal, fixed rate, loan fit in?

I can say this: my fixed rate loan was sold by one of the 'failing' companies, and purchased by some small company, hence causing that 'failing' company to become weaker, in my opinion. I'm thinking they, and other companies on the brink of failure, are probably doing this to survive from day-to-day, selling off their best loans but unable to shed the most toxic of their assets.

Seems to me that a lot of people got rich as the housing boom took place, and now another set of people are getting rich off the housing bust. Nice to see that the irrational behavior of the marketplace is transferring a ton of wealth from company to company. Meanwhile, grocery costs seem to have climbed a bit (anecdote: apples were 1.25 per pound and are now 2.25 per pound, ouch).

The question is, can the common person benefit at all from this crazy economy? Typically, the stock market is only available to those who have a certain minimum amount of money to invest, to overcome the cost per transaction of stock purchases. I refer you to zecco.com, where you can buy stocks without any fees (except the penny or 2 charged by the SEC). This could be a way to buy stock in amazingly great companies for 1% of what they used to cost. Example, Fannie Mae, a company with lots of great loans and great assets, has gone from 40 dollars/share to 60 cents. Buy 100 shares for 60 bucks, and maybe in 10 years they could be worth 10 dollars a share, and you can sell them for 1000 bucks. That is totally possible and, involves such a tiny amount of money that anyone above the age of 16 could do it. Why not eh? at that cost, their entire portfolio of assets could drop a ton, and still you stand a good chance of making a good amount of money. There are still assets behind these 'toxic' loans, and unless $200,000 houses start selling for $4,000 , Fannie mae will eventually turn around. If that actually happened, most of us will be more worried about surviving on rats and whatnot than whatever money we put into our portfolios.