Dr Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the economic train wreck.

       
"It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them." ~Tiberius Caesar

       The Last week has seen our economy become a flaming wreckage.  It has seen members of both parties working to stop the bleeding by saddling the US taxpayer with an 8oo Billion+ debt.  This measure has been only partially successful, and stocks continue to plummet. Naturally this has brought a sense of angst to the American people that has been unmatched since the tragedy of 9-11.  We are all worried about our jobs, or pensions, our school loans and our mortgages.  Everyone is casting about, grasping for solutions.  I have a solution that perhaps has not been considered.  How about instead of worrying about our economic train wreck, we consider the benefits of the recession? Has anyone really stopped to consider why we are in the quandary that we now find ourselves in?  Everyone is so busy pointing fingers, its the Dems, its the GOP, its the banks.  If we were to stop for a minute and engage in some intellectual honesty, I feel that the finger of blame would be pointing right back at us.  Now coming true are the predictions of "alarmists" of the past such as Paul Kasriel, cheif of economic research at Northwestern Trust: "Prior to the recent, unprecedented string of deficits, Kasriel says there have been only seven other years American households have been so upside-down in their finances since 1929. Two of those were during the Great Depression. Three more were just after the end of World War II. Another was in 1955, then again in 1999. That leads to an obvious question: If they can't afford it, how are people continuing to spend as Thursday's report of retail sales suggested they are continuing to do as if all is well?  The answer, which has become all too obvious in recent weeks and months, Kasriel says: They appear, in large part, to be borrowing against their homes, which will become less available as a piggy bank going forward. "Households are going into debt like never before," he says. They also have been net sellers of stocks. All of this means, Kasriel says, that there will be less cash for things we like to buy."   This article, written over a year ago, says what all of us should have seen coming.  Did we think that we could go on forever spending more than we make, living in houses much bigger than our paycheck could support, forever?  Before you point a finger at the predatory practices of the real estate industry, ask yourself this:  Wht is it that almost the entire industry offered these dangerous loans?  The answer of course is that we the ameican people were straining at the bit to get in the yoke for one of them.  In our greed to live in a house that was four times what we could afford, we ignored the danger.  In their greed to take our money, the real estate industery ignored the danger.  In their greed to cash in on the "bubble", the stock brokers ignored the danger. We are all GUILTY.  And guilt deserves punishment.  The only regret I have is that the american taxpayers are now forced to pay the price not only for their own mistakes, but for the mistakes of the industry. Unlike the industry, our "lobbiest"  don't have our best interests at heart.   In my opinion, we should have let them burn, and damn the concequences.  Bad business deserves to go under.  And don't belive that jive that there would be no businesses to step in the gap.  The few businesses that have been responsible and ethical in their lending practices are still standing strong, and our government has denied them the reward for their good business by giving all of these greedy companies a pass.  All of that is water under the bridge, as the big G has already saddled you and I with a massive load of debt. There is a reason for this current economic mess, and if both the industry and the american people need to have a fire lit beneath them in order to realize that fact, so be it.

image by Tom Giebel