6 - To The Tune Of 700 Billion

So the failing economy of this country needs a shot in the ass to get it … what, exactly? Stabilized? And what does stabilizing the economy mean for those of us at the bottom anyway? Since when has anyone in office understood what goes on down here? People want to know what ails the economy? I think it’s pretty simple.

When one percent of a nation’s people have 99% of the money in the nation, the 99% that share the rest bear the brunt of that greed. Too long of this without that money changing familial hands, and that top percent is asking for a revolution.

There is only so much money to go around, and everyone knows this. Printing more money at the mint does not mean you have more money; rather it means the money you had before is worth less.

A healthy economy runs off the principles of supply and demand - I need a job, you supply my job. We make goods other people need/want, they give us money for it, you pay me, we’re all happy. As long as things stay balanced, the economy runs pretty well.

What happens when someone gets greedy? Well, the customer consumer wants to pay less for more - the production people lose. The worker wants more pay - the boss and the consumer lose. The boss wants more money, the rest of the chain lose. The way to avoid melt down is obviously to compromise. But that is pretty hard to do. In the meantime, a few more basic facts…

If you turn your entire industry to acquisition rather than production, you will have no factories and be dependant upon someone else to give you goods. If that someone decides to pull the plug, guess what happens to your business?

If no one is making anything in your country, guess what you have to sell on the foreign market? But since it costs less to sell a good than create it, what have our captains of industry done? Welcome to retail nation. It’s been an unpleasant odyssey watching our young men and women spend fortunes on getting a college education only to wind up working at Wal-Mart anyway. Part of me laughs at the youths running the counters who say, “I’m only here until I get a real job”. … A small part, because if things actually do collapse, then chances are pretty good one of those young and able folks will be getting that job for starting wages while the company lets folks like me “go due to a lack of available hours.”

But all of this is simply uneducated talk. I have heard a row of chatter about how all of this is the Democrats fault. Apparently Carter started the Fanny and Freddie programs and Clinton accelerated things so that now we’re in deep doo. I figure it’s kind of strange how all of this depends on big business and banking, and how it’s all a Democratic snafu. I thought the Republicans were the friends of big business, and wouldn’t that explain the bailout?

But the bailout has so far failed in congress. Is it a good thing? I don’t know. Where will we be if all of these banks fail? Well, you can bet that as it stands it won’t be the guys and gals living in huge mansions that suffer. In the great depression, I seem to recall banks were left holding a lot of defaulted loans and properties that were deemed worthless on the market. As I recall, it took World War Two to retool our ailing businesses and the return of our soldiers with GI loans to move much of that residential property. Again it seems to me the government was the big factor. Where did all that money come from then?

Perhaps the best thing to be said would be the biblical passage that states, “neither a borrower or lender be”. If you own a home, be thankful. If you have debt, hope for the best… we’re going to need it. And if you’re anyone else, maybe it’s time to start stashing cash under the mattress. Friend Machinist says his wife is now saving dry goods for stocking up, just in case, ala Y2K. This time, it might just be useful.

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