28/09: Deal or No Deal? Deal!!!
Category: The Economy
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
The deal is struck. Crisis averted temporarily.
Take the deal. Applaud the deal. It was the right thing to do. The calls on C-SPAN are running fifty to no one against "bailing out the fat cats." No matter, this is one of those instances in which sincere statesmen could not afford to indulge in populist poppycock.
What the misguided callers and disgruntled denizens of "Main Street" fail to realize is that we are all corrupted and connected. We are "fat cats" in our own right. In my small city, USA, every successful lawyer and doctor and small-business owner drives a forty-thousand-dollar-plus vehicle, university faculty live higher than pre-modern nobility, and even the community college teachers live in big houses and drive new cars.
We should suppress our understandable human desire to find malefactors in distant places. The "robber barons of Wall Street" make for colorful villains--but our rush to shift our own complicity clouds the real issue:
We have been living above our means for decades.
This plan avoids the looming cataclysmic crash--but it does not solve our problem.
Some of this I wrote about earlier this week.
This fix is not really a fix. It is only a stopgap. The deal is merely a STAY OF EXECUTION. We can overcome this current crisis, but it is a fire bell in the night. It is a warning, which, if unheeded, signals the beginning of the end for us.
Our only real solution? Repentance.
If we are actually to heal ourselves, we are going to need to change our lifestyles. We must conserve more of our resources. We must practice self denial more and indulge in instant gratification less.
Hopefully, we have avoided a Second Great Depression--but, if we are honest with ourselves, we will grasp this opportunity to recommit ourselves to a healthier and more sustainable culture of reality and sobriety.
This $700 Billion RESCUE was necessary--but it is not a "get out of jail free card." We have an opportunity to turn from our folly. We must seize it. Moving forward with a "business as usual" mindset would be suicidal.
Support the deal and commit yourself to a cultural makeover. A time is coming in which we can no longer have it all.
A Parting Thought: in that vein, perhaps a "spending freeze" is the most practical suggestion put forward by a candidate for national office in the new century.
Take the deal. Applaud the deal. It was the right thing to do. The calls on C-SPAN are running fifty to no one against "bailing out the fat cats." No matter, this is one of those instances in which sincere statesmen could not afford to indulge in populist poppycock.
What the misguided callers and disgruntled denizens of "Main Street" fail to realize is that we are all corrupted and connected. We are "fat cats" in our own right. In my small city, USA, every successful lawyer and doctor and small-business owner drives a forty-thousand-dollar-plus vehicle, university faculty live higher than pre-modern nobility, and even the community college teachers live in big houses and drive new cars.
We should suppress our understandable human desire to find malefactors in distant places. The "robber barons of Wall Street" make for colorful villains--but our rush to shift our own complicity clouds the real issue:
We have been living above our means for decades.
This plan avoids the looming cataclysmic crash--but it does not solve our problem.
Some of this I wrote about earlier this week.
This fix is not really a fix. It is only a stopgap. The deal is merely a STAY OF EXECUTION. We can overcome this current crisis, but it is a fire bell in the night. It is a warning, which, if unheeded, signals the beginning of the end for us.
Our only real solution? Repentance.
If we are actually to heal ourselves, we are going to need to change our lifestyles. We must conserve more of our resources. We must practice self denial more and indulge in instant gratification less.
Hopefully, we have avoided a Second Great Depression--but, if we are honest with ourselves, we will grasp this opportunity to recommit ourselves to a healthier and more sustainable culture of reality and sobriety.
This $700 Billion RESCUE was necessary--but it is not a "get out of jail free card." We have an opportunity to turn from our folly. We must seize it. Moving forward with a "business as usual" mindset would be suicidal.
Support the deal and commit yourself to a cultural makeover. A time is coming in which we can no longer have it all.
A Parting Thought: in that vein, perhaps a "spending freeze" is the most practical suggestion put forward by a candidate for national office in the new century.
