Just one more...

Please indulge me one more time for a reality check.

Chatstack's comments on the previous post were very poignantly stated. My heart goes out to all who have been struggling to achieve the "American Dream".

In my opinion, this dream is fading for the "middle class" and certainly for the "lower income" folks.

Wages for working people have been in decline since the mid-70's. And, while we've had the illusion of propserity with SUV's, big screen TV's, etc., we all went into debt to achieve it.

I saw this great video series today. There are about 17 videos and I only made it to number 11. Check it out if you want a great class in economics. Number five is my favorite.




~Enjoy.

Dropping in...

We've just returned from two weeks in Denver to celebrate my mother-in-law's 80th birthday. It was a wonderful event with over 220 people.

Still overloaded and overbooked so don't have time to write but I wanted to share this economic commentary from James Quinn, senior director of strategic planning, Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.

The most significant quote for me was this one... "The debt induced spending that occurred from 2001 until 2007 accounted for virtually all the GDP growth over this time."

Here's the article with some excellent charts from several different sources.

The Great Consumer Crash of 2009

~Enjoy

Privatize the profits...socialize the losses

(I thought I invented the headline "Privatize the profits..." but in doing some research I see that there's a million other people out there using it. Oh well...I still like it.)

I try to stay focused on local issues most of the time but sometimes the national and global events are just too compelling to let pass.

Can you believe that bill that Congress passed to bail out the "400,000 homeowners" at risk of losing their homes?

It's going to cost the taxpayers $ 25 billion. The CEO's of those two companies(yes Fannie and Freddie are private entities - not government programs) pulled in $32 million in the last two years as these companies went down the tubes.


What's sad is that this was all so predictable. When the Federal Reserve stopped reporting M3 several years ago, it was a hint of the problems we're facing today. Printing all that money just prolonged the agony a few more years.

Isn't it strange that all of these Harvard and Yale MBA's couldn't see this coming? What about GM not being able to forecast the need for vehicles with better gas mileage? All the money in the world can't buy an education that has more value than common sense.

Here's another fun website to checkout.