Many families go to theme parks for their summer vacations. The rides, of course, are the main attractions, especially roller coasters. Many of us went on a different sort of roller coaster ride this summer on a ride called Bulls and Bears.

After that click-click-click of the ride pulling us up to greater heights, we lost much more than our breaths on the ride down. At least with a theme park roller coaster, we are fairly confident that we will eventually arrive safely at the end of the ride--and the ride will only cost us a stomach left behind and the price of admission. Still, as August comes to an end, the market is up from the lows of January.

While the effect has mostly been to shrink our recently swollen nest eggs, it may have an effect that is more devastating. As we notice that our own nest eggs will need to be a bit larger for us to retire, we cut back on spending to increase our savings. If each dollar of savings is either loaned to businesses or invested to finance equipment for future growth, the production level of the country stays on an even keel. But if much of the savings is switched to cash accounts because people have gotten burned so badly, watch out. We could slide into a recession.

South Louisiana though doesn't always follow the rest of the nation in economic upturns and downturns. Sometimes it seems that it's mostly the upturns we miss. Though we usually have our own separate business cycles, since 1990 we have followed the rest of the country.

But is this really a bear market we are seeing? At the end of August, the market is down, but we really have no trend, yet. The end of a bear market and the beginning of a bull market are times to buy in to the stock market. Buy low and sell high is still the key to making profits. The problem is that it's so hard to tell what lies ahead. Of course, as with comedy and hitting a fast ball, timing is everything. But jokes and pitches are much easier to time than the stock market.

In terms of investing advice, I'm all out, except that a steady course of steadily stashing funds away each month is still sound. But, like roller coasters, the stock market is not for the faint of heart--you have to hold on tight and scream on the way down. And I usually shut my eyes!

While there could be trouble ahead for the national economy, locally things still are pretty good. Even though oil prices are still down below $14, and the rig count is down (mostly shallow-water rigs run operated by independents), the most recent auction for offshore mineral leases yielded just about as much in total lease values as the previous auction.

Shipyards and fabricators are still so busy that they must hire temporary workers from other countries. I am sure that we have all have run into some of these workers at the grocery store or the mall or Wal-Mart, speaking to each other in Spanish.

These temporary foreign workers are not "taking jobs away" from anyone--their employers have to show extensive documentation of a labor shortage and must pay them prevailing wages. These workers can stay here for no more than a year, which makes hiring these workers especially costly, as the hiring process must start all over the next year, just about the time the foreign worker becomes familiar with the company's procedures. These employers are already doing what they can to train prospective workers and even high school students for skilled jobs. But there is still a shortage of about 6000 shipyard workers in Louisiana. Were it not for the temporary, immigrant workers, many of our larger employers would not be able to fulfill contracts on time, and that would be bad news for the entire area.

In some parts of the country, foreign workers are under appreciated. Let's not let that happen here. We need them.