It says, in the Bible no less, that love of money is the root of all evil. Most people do not know the verse is written that way, because we usually hear it quoted as money itself is the root of all evil. I think that interpretation better suits our acquisitive society, a condemnation of the haves by the have nots. Speaking as a have not, I'm going to be honest here, I would love to have some money laying around to hate. I would settle for having money to pay my bills, which isn't a given in any particular month, either.
Like so many people, I have had a mid-life meltdown, a series of events that picked up the pieces of my life, shook them up, and dumped them back upside down on the table all out of order, and with scrapes and scratches to nurse as well. I would compare my life to the kind of jigsaw puzzle that has 1500 pieces that are all identical in shape. Although the pieces fit together and the puzzle made the correct size of square on the table, the picture was messed up and confused, leaving the puzzle unfinished and disorderly. It looked good from a distance, but up close it was, in a word, wrong. Untenable.
All of which changed when my ex, Mr. Stability, decided to go AWOL on our family life and start over again with someone else. Or someones else, since he started over before he even left, but that's neither here nor there, probably. Although it was certainly there when I filed for divorce, let me tell you. But I am a very forgiving person, and I have moved on. I am a very forgiving person and I have moved on. I am a very forgiving....
Over the last few years, I have made attempts to take my messed up pieces and put them back together in the right order, but I have found it to be a lot harder than I imagined. Things have not fallen into place the way I would have wished. Somehow, the picture remains a trifle messy, and the pieces still seem to be put together wrong.
The edges of my puzzle pieces are frayed, and no longer snap together tightly like they did when I was new and fresh. Too often, it seems, I cannot be certain that I have found the right fit. While it looks right, and the pieces fill the hole, the picture is distorted by the damage from being so unceremoniously shaken and dumped on the table that is my life. So I fit the pieces into place as best I can, hoping I have gotten them right. I am, however, a lot more willing these days to acknowledge that I may have them put together wrong, and much less reluctant to cut my losses and try again. Which may be a good thing, all in all, but is certainly a life lesson that was hard earned.
I think my experience of the last few years gives me some insight into the psyche of the person caught in the current financial collapse of our economy. It is difficult to see disaster coming. You don't want to face it, you run and hide in the closet and pretend that things aren't what they seem. You will do anything to stave off a reality that is more frightening than anything you may have dreamed in your occasional nightmares that would come in an unguarded moment, when you were vulnerable and worrying about the choices you have made.
Although they are not without personal responsibility, and thus must accept some of the blame, people who overborrowed and overspent were seduced by a culture that encourages greed at an unprecedented level, and it is difficult to throw stones out of the glass houses that most of us live in. I hear an astounding amount of vituperation being levelled at people who now find themselves in desperate straits, and I find I cannot join the cacophony of hate that seems to be accompanying it.
I have always been a strong advocate for personal accountability, and I do feel it's important to accept the consequences for bad decisions that you have made. However, I also understand that sometimes you don't see the end of the road, and a choice that looks responsible, or at least reasonable at the time you have made it may not, in retrospect, look so good. I understand how easy it can be to get caught up in the moment, the thrill of the new house or the new car, the vacation or the new wardrobe, and overspend. Even more, however, I understand how you make decisions based on the financial picture of the moment, never realizing how quickly that picture can change with a job loss, marital disaster, or medical crisis.
I believe that the desire to better one's circumstances, is an evolutionary mechanism to ensure that human beings will remain viable and thrive. It is that very aspiration to improve one's life station, often for the benefit of the people we love as much as for own edification, that drives us to work hard to get ahead on the job, and to buy the bigger house and the fancier car and the designer clothing in the first place. The desire to acquire goes back to Adam and Eve, and is an innate part of being human, God given and human driven.
I think our cultural identity is wrapped up in that reality. Americans are known the world over for the desire to have the biggest, newest, best, most of everything. While it is a cause of some scorn, both here and elsewhere, it is a scorn born of envy, for the most part, and not one of true derision. If it were, there wouldn't be a black market for all things American thriving most actively in the very places where America is most heavily derided.
I feel sadness and sympathy for the people who bought ARM's on the advice of loan officers and lenders who made something ultimately too good to be true sound genuine and possible. I see house after house with a "For Sale" sign in front of it, and I understand they represent the broken hearts and shattered dreams of people who once bought the American dream, and now find themselves outside the window fogging up the glass.
I have never been one to be overly critical of other people's choices. In the first place, it's just not in my nature. In the second place, I have made way too many mistakes of my own to allow myself the luxury of criticising others. I have always taken to heart that verse that says you should avoid pointing out the speck in the eyes of others when you can't see past the log in your own eye. I have enough logs to build a dam, and staying ahead of disaster keeps me fully occupied.
I find it interesting how everyone has an opinion on what needs to be done to resolve the current financial crisis. All are agreed, we cannot allow this situation to continue, because the entire economy appears poised for collapse. Personally, I don't know anything about economics, macro or micro. [I wanted to do something practical with my time in college, so I majored in English and religion. I can't tell you how helpful it has been over the years to have read everything that C.S. Lewis ever wrote, and better yet, to have forgotten all of it.] I'm sure there are plenty of theories to consider, and any number of advisors far more knowledgable than me to make the tough decisions.
What I do know is gained from my real life experience, and I offer it here freely as a gift. When you spend more than you make, you have a big problem.
Our country, individually and collectively, has been living on borrowed funds for as long as I've been alive and then some, and I think the chickens may be coming home to roost. Aside from the mixed metaphors, I suspect that the real solution to the current disastrous situation is not going to be found in spending more on companies that are doing less and less for their customers, although I surely would like to be their CEO, because that is where the real money is. I think, ultimately, the answer will probably be found in sacrifice and learning, as a nation, and as individuals, to live within our means, something that goes against the very grain of our 21st Century lifestyle.
I don't think it will be simple, and I don't think it will be quick. I think, as a nation, we are going to have to face ourselves and learn a new way to live. The Depression Generation is well versed in sacrifice and doing without. It may well be that we Boomers will have to turn to our parents, that Greatest Generation, once again, to learn from them how to live within our means, something they do very well, and we do not at all
We have become a throwaway, disposable society. We don't fix, we buy new. We don't repair, we don't restore, we don't recycle, and we don't reuse. We want more, we want new, and we no longer have an appreciation for what we have at hand. The old line, "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush," comes to mind. We need to learn to value what we are holding, rather than place our confidence in something that may not exist except in the eloquent words of someone who will take your money and fly away.
What is the answer, then, for the current economic crisis? I have no answers, and I sincerely hope that the people in charge know more about it than me. I have heard all kinds of opinions, that run the gamet from one end of the financial spectrum to the other.
On the one hand, we have our President and his administration originally advocating a full bailout with no strings attached, led by a former Wall Street power broker who is now in charge of the Fed. I am happy to note that I am not the only one who hears the alarm bells ringing, although it certainly is the only time in recent memory that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress seem to agree on anything.
On the other side, we have those who advocate doing nothing and allowing the free and open market to run its course, regardless of how much damage it inflicts on our economic system, and perhaps the very stability of our country itself (the inadvisability of which is another thing that has brought our warring leadership together.) I wonder if anyone else has the nagging concern that those are the people who will most benefit when the collapse occurs, and that their advocacy may be more on behalf of their own financial portfolios than on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Main Street?
Where money is concerned, there are as many opinions as there are people, and I can only hope that the ones to make the decisions know more about it than the rest of us. I am baffled by the expressed opinion of The Common Man in the Street that they want to vote for someone who is like them - someone with whom they could sit on the front porch and have a beer, or whatever folksy portrayal the media has picked today. To that, I can only respond with bewilderment, because if someone like me, and probably like you, is in charge, we will be in trouble.
I don't know about you, but I want someone with a tremendous education, someone who has learned the theories and watched them in practice to see how they really work. I want someone who has experience in both business and government, so they understand, as a practical reality, what the government can and cannot do, and what that government intervention will ultimately do in the business world it is trying so desperately to help. I want someone that is the elite of the elite, someone so far above me in intellect and learning and experience that I cannot hope to have a coherent conversation with them. What I want is someone who has run a successful business, not run it into the ground, because anything less will land us right back where we are, but a few hundred billion dollars poorer.
I am a paean, insignificant in the larger scope of the world. My opinion is meaningless to those in charge, and isn't worth much to anyone else, either. But I hold in my hands the lives of two other people, and the answers that come today and in the next few days will affect the ability of those two people to live a life that is better than mine, to have a world that is stable and free.
We cannot afford to blow it, not because we deserve to be bailed out - we have been the problem, and we should pay the price - but because our future generations deserve to have the opportunities that this country was founded on. The United States of America were born with an ideal that all people were entitled to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hope that before our national leaders sign on the dotted line, they will remember that our future generations deserve the right to make their own mistakes and pay for them, even if it comes at our own cost.
