The word on the street -- namely, Wall Street -- is that we're in trouble. Some analysts are predicting the current financial crisis to be worse than the Great Depression. Others are saying at the very least it's the worst situation they've seen in their lifetimes. All agree that the financial industry can't get out of this mess alone, and that we're all going to experience the fallout.

You don't have to have a degree in economics to understand this basic equation: nearly 25 percent of the total income in New York City is in the financial sector, which comprises only 3 percent of the total workforce.

This means that once that handful of people who earn a whole lot of money suddenly lose their salaries, or worse, their jobs, all the places they used to spend their fortunes suffer too.

Restaurants, bars, strip-clubs, salons, theaters, boutiques -- you name it. If it's part of commercial society, it'll be affected.

Walk by any restaurant that specializes in steak -- and no, I'm not being facetious -- and you'll see a lot of empty seats.

Even the MTA is panicking, as it looks at a $900 million deficit that could get worse if the economy doesn't improve.

This means lots of other people lose their jobs, too, or if they're in the service industry, have to survive on much fewer or lower tips.

And this is just the beginning. Yesterday, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pleaded the Senate to pass a bill granting $700 billion to bail the financial industry out of its self-made crisis without further ado. We can discuss future regulation later, he told lawmakers.

Hillary Rosen, of the Huffington Post, offers the following suggestions for getting out of this quagmire before it drowns us, and for ensuring that nothing like it happens again:

1. Taxpayers need equity in the companies we are saving. If the government is guaranteeing rather than buying the "bad" paper, once those investments pay off -- and many of them eventually will -- we will have gotten nothing for our money. We will absorb the losses but get nothing for the gains.

2. Executive pay must be limited. Executives of the firms we save must not be allowed to be the ones benefiting. If the firms' stock prices and profits increase during the time we are guaranteeing against their losses, there should be a pool where that money goes to ALL employees after the taxpayers are paid back equity on our investment.

3. Congress must have continued oversight. The authority should sunset after six months. There should be a special committee of members of Congress on an oversight board and they should be forbidden from taking political contributions from the financial sector.

4. Stimulus funds that focus on more than just mortgages -- we need jobs. If sufficient authority already rests within the Federal Housing Authority, the Bush administration must be required to act on it to help regular folks from losing their houses due to bad loan practices, and if it is not adequate, it must be increased.

But the other key point of our economic emergency is that too many people are losing their jobs based on financial decisions beyond their control. We have historically high job losses over the past few months. What could be more of an emergency than to address this now rather than wait another six months for Congress and a new president?

[Image: Unemployment March, photographer unknown]