Nathan

What an extraordinary year.  Oddly I saw the housing crash on the horizon as far back as 2004 or so when talking with friends but I never could have imagined where it would take us.  And it seems the ride is not over yet.  I guess the fat cats on the cover of Fortune just a few months ago crowing about Citi are perhaps more reserved today as I type this.  

It is funny to me how we argue and debate about the words we use to define what is happening to us in these most amazing times.  Recession.  Depression.  Tomato.  Toomato.  Let me throw one out there for folks to consider: a reckoning.  It is as simple as that.  It is our day of reckoning and are we responding appropriately?  I will throw my guess out there: no.  

Granted that I am more apt to throw out historical parallels in these wild times than perhaps most but I will offer to you what you no doubt may have guessed if you read this blog very much: our earth is telling us something in so many ways.  We need to listen.  

At the core of it to me our earth really is saying that we are too many and we are asking for too much.  Slow down.  Now, granted, I am not sure how I would put this information in my innagural address and package it for the American people and the world to truly understand but there are unmistakable signs out there that we keep trying to cover up for ourselves by using short, punchy words like 'recession'.  

This is more than that of course.  It has no absolute label and no one, including this writer, has any idea where it is going or how it going to end up but briefly we should explore how we got here:

Technology stocks bit the dust right around the turn of the millineum.  9/11 happened.  We as a nation frankly should have had quite a downturn under any other circumstances simply because, well, the capitalist system is like that for one and two, much wealth and confidence had evaporated.  But instead of visiting the shallow end of the pool on that one and taking our medicine we took actions to paper over this crisis.  Literally.  So much money and paper was pumped into the system from all sorts of streams that we made the dip as short and painless as possible.  

But there is no free lunch and now we are paying for this extremely loose money policy.  It is not just housing - that is where I had it wrong.  That, oddly, is just a symptom.  

Because again, now, we are seeing this same response: paper over our failures.  Rescue another one.  Give them cash or at least a guarentee or, hell, I don't know but THEY ARE TOO BIG TO FAIL.  

Let us please break out of this and realize that for the good of our children and the good of our society and our country and our way of life: we need to take a long look in the mirror and get off the various addictions we have been holding so dear.  The time is right.