Meltdown jolts consumers from financial fairyland

CHICAGO (Sept. 20) -The stock market bounced back, just as it has for nearly three decades. It just doesn't feel that way.

Last year's financial meltdown knocked the swagger out of Americans' views toward investing. The baby boomers who forged the Reagan bull market; survived the 1987 crash; bought Amazon.com at $2 a share and sold at $100; brushed off the collapse of the dot-com bubble and kept plowing money into their 401(k)s are reassessing what they once believed.