I came home and went directly to bed last night. I just have that fuzzy off feeling like the flu is coming back so it is time to just gently pass out as the body directs.
On the way home from dinner last night I passed my very first, on November 13th no less, full scale white light christmas tree and manger deal outside a shopping plaza. Christmas, we've only just begun to creep close enough to thanksgiving to even realize its on the calendar.
And all around me the financial crisis is beginning to hit, layoffs in one company, "belt-tightening" in another. I talked to someone who is of the "world war III" camp and they blamed the financial crisis squarely on the "little man".
"If they hadn't borrowed money to buy things they couldn't afford we wouldn't be in this mess so of course we have to bail out the poor, maligned big businesses."
While there is a lot of valid truth in the fact that it was sheer stupidity and financial irresponsibility to a) borrow to buy things that your lifestyle cannot afford and b) borrow to buy things that you can't afford and are not worth the price attached to them (ie cethe housing market) - it is downright bald headed irresponisble and dumb behavior on the part of business to have been so intent on selling "non-existent" products to people who cannot afford them with money the business loans them from funds they had to borrow themselves.
Its like a game "if you believe what I believe then we can keep passing this cookie back and forth and everything will be fine as long as no one tries to eat it."
Because then you discover, instead of sugar, flour and milk - the cookie was made with water and sand.
What gets me, as things enter this stage and people are "belt-tightening" and feeling the frightening effects of a recession, is the attitude, the thinking that is going on that we have to just get through this and then things will be fixed and we will go on.
Any time you hear "belt-tightening" what it means is the way we tried to do things didn't work. So, why would you want to try and fix something that is broken instead of learn to do something new.
Free market capitalism is not the cause of this problem. The cause of this problem is the failure of the the people who participate in the free-market to insure their products are worthwhile things and the failure of the consumer to regard a product as a choice to be decided on whether that product be a house, a loan, health insurance, food or a car. Just because it is there and someone gives us a coupon for it doesn't mean it is a good thing or that we are saving money. Coupons, to me, are generally a sign that there is something about the product, something about the pricing of the product that is not justified by the products actual worth.
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