Families and businesses take their best shot, when making financial decisions. They assess where things are, where they are likely to go and then act.

Lately, a tornado of economic conditions has everyone from Maine homeowners to lobstermen trying to pick up the pieces of their financial lives, after having made perfectly reasonable decisions that now have them trapped.

Few of us spend much time thinking about the plumbing in our homes, much less the plumbing of the world's financial system.

But people around the world have focused on just that during these last three weeks, as policy makers have raced to fix the credit markets that carry money from those who have funds available to those who need it.

The pipes have burst in the basement, and the public is angry, confused and in a panic, trying salvage what they have been saving. The stock market has seen its biggest sell-off in a generation.