They say the recovery has begun. Before you start post recession celebrating however, you had better take a long, hard look at what’s going on.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal blog “Real Time Economics,” the country’s gaping 10% unemployment figure is going to take much longer to rebound. 

This is because companies need to see more steady cash in hand before they feel comfortable beginning to hire again. But there’s another dynamic as well.

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Back in the day, on the playgrounds of the 1960s, we all used to climb around on what were then called monkey bars, or perhaps jungle gyms. These were precariously designed contraptions that consisted of naked steel pipes (they might have even been lead) that were affixed to one another in a boxlike configuration that rose 5 to 10 feet in the air, and that was intended for kids to climb on. Sometimes they were placed on grass, but more often than not they were located on a macadam playground, or were affixed directly to a cement slab. A contemporary mom, upon seeing her child climbing on one of these accidents-waiting-to-happen, would likely go into cardiac arrest. You should consider the stock market, particularly when planning your retirement, as financial monkey bars—potentially very dangerous.