The Way

Its a turbulent time to be alive, no doubt about it.  We are facing unprecedented (at least in our collective economic memory, which tends to go back about fifteen minutes, though, if pushed may remember the percent change in the Dow Jones yesterday) financial strife, as everyone likes to proclaim loudly, though perhaps due more to a penchant for sensationalism than actual fact.  We all too easily forget the Depression our parents and grandparents so powerfully if not proudly weathered, or even the inflation of the early 1980s, both “unprecedented” economic crises of a magnitude equal to or greater than that of today in scale if not actual (i.e. inflated) dollar values–to say nothing of the countless smaller recessions in our history.  Bottomline: the economy ebbs and flows, regardless of how it is managed, a secret to no one.  It is a delicately balanced system precariously susceptible to countless factors the worldwide, so lets stop acting so shocked or wronged that we’re facing difficulties as a nation (or world) and start focusing on whats next.

And what is next for us Americans?  Our trusted leaders are currently in the midst of doling out bailouts well in the excess of $700 billion (and growing) into our poor and flagging economy.  Hoorah, help is on the way!  Roll out the red carpets and wait for the prosperity to start rolling in. 

And yet, we get so wrapped up in numbers and fear that we forget to even ask (or care?), just where the heck is this money coming from anyways?  Are we just going to print a bunch more and breathe one collective sigh of relief?  Money is not free!  We will have to deal with this somehow, whether through the economic crisis today or a debt crisis down the road that we are currently building at an unheard of pace. 

Now lets be clear on a a few things.  I believe that our economic crisis is serious and needs to be addressed.  And I do not know how we are supposed to effectively do that as a nation.  But borrowing more money is hardly a long term solution.  Our National Debt (thats right, its ours and we have to deal with it) is currently and quickly approaching $11 trillion, an unfathomable amount, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 16% of our collective income tax every year goes just to pay interest on the debt!  Thats an unbelievable number of dollars that could otherwise be going to better education, better roads, more government jobs and programs, or any of hundreds of other needs we desperately face.  But instead of cutting back we would rather just add more to the principal? 

Now those of us with credit card debt–a goodly majority of us Americans–might be able to appreciate this maelstrom we continue to swirl about in: debt does not just go away!  So our world today may be helped by a big bailout (just like a teenager who maxes out his credit card and has to get Dad to bail him out), but what about tomorrow?  Someone, somewhere, someday is going to have to deal with every dollar we borrow now , and if its not us later, its most certainly going to be our children.  Wake up and smell the feedback cycle folks; if we simply continue to pass off our problems today to our kids tomorrow–as our parents did to us–eventually someone is going to have a problem that is far greater than their capacity to accomodate, and there will then come a day when our economic system simply will not be able to withstand the weight of its own debt.  And this is a gift I firmly believe we do not desire to bequeathe upon our progeny; lord knows they will have enough of a task trying to deal with the angry beast that is the looming social security crisis.

The time for actaion is indeed now and the action required is some accountability.  We can point fingers until the sun comes up but the brutal reality of the matter is that this is our country right now, and if we choose to elect someone who will spend our money frivolously and burn the economy down in the process, then we also choose to accept the consequences.  It might not be a pretty stretch folks and we might suffer dearly, but we’ve gotten through worse before and maybe this time we will learn from the past in order to ensure better success in the future.

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