If you were hoping for a quick and easy end to the world's economic woes, it's time to bring yourself down from the land of dreams and snap back into the real world.  The economy is hurting, and it is going to remain that way for quite some time, so it is time for us all to buckle down and get prepared for a rough ride.

Although you probably encounter evidence of the less than ideal economy during your day to day life, if you need additional proof that things are getting tough, all you need to do is look at almost any major company to see the pain that they are going through.  Because the woes of the economy began in the financial sector, many people assumed that these were the only types of companies that would be impacted by the sub-par performance of the economy.  However, companies from a countless number of industries have been negatively impacted by the slowdown of the economy, and it seems like no one is immune from being brought down.  A perfect example of this is the online poker industry.  While this industry had no direct involvement in the roots of the troublesome economic issues, the online poker industry has been hit hard.  Even though it is not their first time, the World Poker Tour Enterprises recently came out with their third quarter financials, and things seem to be continuing down a relatively bleak path.

Continuing their recent trend, the WPTE posted another loss for the third quarter.  In just three months, the WPTE managed to lose $4.4 million.  To put this in perspective, while they had posted a loss during for last year's third quarter, it was only $2.7 million.  This year, they were only able to generate a total of $2.8 million in revenue during the third quarter.

While this news wouldn't be as bad if WPTE expected to see a turnaround in the near future, this is definitely not what WPTE is predicting.  According to the company, they will encounter additional losses during the last quarter of 2008 (their estimates fall in the range of $3 million).