Financial Crisis Town Hall

(CBS)  As each passing day seems to bring new headlines and worries about the economy, and with them, more questions about how to handle our money.

To help us get a handle on that, The Early Show held a "town hall" Tuesday, providing answers to questions e-mailed in by viewers during the show, and from people in the audience in Belmont Mansion in Nashville, on the campus of Belmont University, site of Tuesday night's presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.

On hand were co-anchors Julie Chen in New York and Harry Smith in the mansion, as the questions were fielded by The Early Show's own financial expert, Ray Martin, and Jennifer Openshaw, president of WeSeed.com:

[joholt]

I am very concernedabout the energy of our country. J Bone Pickins,has made the statment that we hav a surpless of natual gas, coal, and wind, What is wrong with our governmant? Do they all have their head in the sand? Why are e giving terriost countries billions of dollars for oil when we couldbe self sufficient in our country. I am expecting for this to happen immideatly, If we keep thismoney in the USA, we sould not be over 10 trillion dollars in debt, we could havea surpless, let''s take this bale out money and develop energy for all americans. pleae pass this on. Joretta Holt North Carolia 71 years old widow

[bianca62-2009]

I believe the problem has been the mentality of Americans that they can spend without having money and government too always thinking it would not catch up with us. If you see Asian families you will notice they save,save,save and invest for the future while AMericans think of NOW and charging it. No wonder China is so rich now, with trillions of reserves and the Chinese families there sit together with their families to see if they should buy something and then they decide instead to put the money for retirement.
When I was selling my house more than a year ago I was told the people who buy with cash are Asians. The people who came to see my house and were interested were all Asians(chinese, korean, japanese). It is true. I ended up selling it to a korean family because they gave me a hefty deposit too. Americans have to take a loan to pay a house and most Asians come in with cash. Maybe this will help us change our ways and live within our means. Of course there were predatory lenders too but it''s the culture I think of making a quick buck and no ethics and not thinking Can we afford this?

[wandakay28]

This whole bail out is just a way to reward bad behavior. Instead of bailing out the mortgage companyies, why don''t they bail out the individuals that are losing their houses. If the government could assist homeowners to make their payments, that would put money back into the mortgage companies, let people keep their homes, and credit, and also doesn''t leave vacant houses sitting.

It might make more work for the mortgage companies to keep track and assist in applying for the assistance. But it will make up for the quick money deals that added to this problem in the first place. It''s call natural consequenses.

[random_radar]

If everyone saves instead of spends, it will drive down the demand for goods, which in turn causes a fall in prices. That makes your money more valuable in the future.

Of course, that will also drive bad companies out of business and make debtors suffer. If you are in debt, you could pay it off or else complain. If you run a business badly, you could liquidate it and do something useful or else ask for a bailout from congress.

But if we all paid off our debts and did something productive, we would become wealthy as a nation. The problem is that most people are going to beg for inflation and handouts instead and become poor.