One compelled by law Which law has not been changed. The rot hasn’t been stopped. Buy nothing packaged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Every year, we go through four seasons. No matter what we do, how we spend, how we live, how much money we have in our bank accounts, etc. we are going to live through a winter every year. Why not, every so often, also expect to have an economic and societal winter as well?

I will say that not only are we going to live through tough times ahead, it is going to get rather nasty. We’re going to live through tough times and there’s nothing we can do but do the things one does to get through a winter.

By the way, just as a point about the ratio between stupidity and economic spending, in the 1930′s a great deal of wealthy and well off people lost everything as well. So, the great “unwashed” are not the only one’s who get screwed from their shoddy financial habits.

Consumer spending is down 1%. That is not a precipitous drop by any means. And that 1% is only because there is no more money left or because the credit card limits have been decreased.

The second an American gets an extra available $1, he will spend that dollar. No lessons have been learned. If anything Americans now expect – no demand – that politicians send them a never ending supply of money. Housing bailouts. Bank bailouts. Car loan bailouts. Credit card bailouts (coming soon). The notion of actually spending less is alien to Americans. The debate now is not whether to spend more or spend less, only where should the money to spend more come from and how much should it be.

So, angryed, the precipitous drop in consumer spending doesn’t suggest to you any awareness on the part of Americans that we need to get our financial houses in order? Wouldn’t it be nice if our dumb-a**ed politicians would respond to their massive indebtedness problem by shutting down THEIR spending in a like manner? Instead of exacerbating the problem by spending even more and intervening in ever more incompetent fashion?

PD Quig on November 29, 2008 at 10:14 AM

Well they chose Obama , the bigger spender.

Why is there a lesson to be learned about “consumption”?!

Seriously, you sound like some dumbass European chiding those “stupid Americans for thinking they can have so much.” The fact that Americans think they can consume so much is because they’re optimistic that America will prosper.

Sir Andrew on November 29, 2008 at 1:22 AM

Well yes. Americans are stupid for thinking they can have so much, when in reality they can’t. Americans are stupid for thinking they can buy a $500K house on a $40K salary. They are stupid for thinking they can buy all sorts of crap on their credit card and worry about how to pay for it later. They are stupid for buying the 12 MPG suv and then when gas goes to $4 not being able to drive it anymore.

And it’s silly Sean Hannity type arguments like ‘America will always prosper’ that adds fuel to the fire. America can prosper for the next 20 years, still doesn’t justify they stupidity exhibited by Americans over the past decade.

Reality is however that the US is heading into an economic shit storm that will rival the 1930s. You can put on your red white and blue blinders and think otherwise. Or you can read some history and note that the 1920s and 2000s are almost identical in every economic aspect and that the chances of a depression are very real.

Americans are addicted to buying shit they don’t need to impress people they don’t like. People don’t learn a lesson about not injecting heroin in their veins. They have to reach rock bottom, wake up in a ditch somewhere and have the epiphany that it’s time to get help. Americans are nowhere near that point.

http://www.conservativewomenunited.blogspot.com/2008/11/society-to-assist-irresponsible.html

Seriously, you sound like some dumbass European chiding those “stupid Americans for thinking they can have so much.” The fact that Americans think they can consume so much is because they’re optimistic that America will prosper.

Unless I am mistaken, no one has admitted a mistake yet. This means that million of Americans will make this same mistake again.

No one that needs to has learned any lesson. I assure you of this.

garyganu on November 28, 2008 at 10:23 PM

You are spot on and I agree! Excellent website, BTW!

Under these conditions, the American standard of living can only be sustained by selling off assets that we have accumulated in the past, and/or borrowing money with a promise to repay it in the future. Obviously this can not go on indefinitely, there will come a day of reckoning.

A fitting analogy would be, the prospect of surgery and subsequent chemotherapy for a cancer patient. Surgery and chemotherapy will ensure pain and suffering in the short term, but the patient will have an excellent chance of recovery. Postponing the surgical option, and improving the patients “quality of life” with painkillers, will certainly insure the patients death. If, we as a nation, do not choose the more painful option in the short term, we face almost certain catastrophic economic failure and possibly the end of America as we know it.

Two Concise Reasons Why We Face Certain Economic Doom

So you are telling me, that since you haven’t the discipline to control yourself, nobody should be allowed to have credit cards?

Or perhaps you want to license credit cards. Only those who can pass a govt test will be allowed to have them?

Credit cards aren’t so bad. So long as you have the discipline to use them properly.

I have one, I use it for most of my purchases, but I pay it off every month.

MarkTheGreat on November 28, 2008 at 7:48 PM

…and morphine is a dandy substance if used with properly and with discipline….

…look about you and show me signs of discipline….

…the point is that folks are actually waved away from discipline in return for short-term gain…we need to think long-term….

…credit cards leave paper trails, which’re nice…credit cards in business are a must…credit in general, if used properly, is what keeps industry spinning, crops a’planting, and cars goin’ off the show-room floor….

…but, get the government involved — and make denial of a home loan a racist offense — and you’ve got disaster….

…where the government’s concerned, they’re spending other people’s money, which might as well be Monopoly money…for many of our neighbors, it’s also Monopoly money, they’re the little dog, and come the end of the month they’re prayin’ that they pass “Go”…and figure we’re here to bail ‘em out if they instead land on Broadway, hotels abounding….

I have one, I use it for most of my purchases, but I pay it off every month.
This allows me to keep my money in my savings account for an extra week or three, and I get points with each purchase, that I use to pick up $50 gift card two or three times a year.

I don’t have an annual fee either.

Consumers are now abandoning the asset-dependent spending and saving strategies they embraced during the bubbles of the past dozen years and moving back to more prudent income-based lifestyles.

You do realize Ed that, bar something like unemployment going above 10% and/or interest rates on loans doubling, this phenomenon will have a half life of about a couple of months.