Fight the Downturn Yourself

Buy American. Buy local. Cut up credit cards. Plant a garden to grow some of your own food.

If everyone in America decided to only buy American, it would be a large, focused economic power that we really need right now.

FIGHT for energy independence.

Throw eggs at investment bankers. I've been promising a lot lately to my readers, but this last one I think is the kicker. We need to find those greedy bastards and ATTACK!! No deadly force, just a few ruined suits and the sounds of breaking egg shells. If I think for a moment, I could come up with some way the egg throwing could be deeply symbolic. Ah, well.

Our Katrina Leadership

Our President has finally come out and addressed the nation with a few, vague words intended to comfort a shell-shocked nation. Nothing specific, of course. No acknowledgement of the pain and fear the nation is experiencing.

In fact, it took the howling of the press to even get the President to admit that he needed to say anything at all about the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

What it shows is the Bush Presidency is just as disconnected and dysfunctional as it was during Katrina. And just as unable to act in times of crisis, let alone think, communicate and articulate a plan.

And let's not forget the ringing endorsement of the SEC chair, similar to his support for Brownie of FEMA during Katrina.

This entire episode demonstrates the Bush Presidency's inability to lead or think. Does anyone else remember how dazed and confused Bush was in the immediate aftermath of September 11th? Or am I the only one in America?

International Financial Meltdown

Are you depressed yet? Do you somehow think that these stopgap measures are going to solve the essential problem facing international markets? It won't.

The essential problem is a lack of trust in the value of securities. That failure of trust is based on the perception of corruption in those markets. It is also based on the perception that securities markets have been flying too high with these weird new financial instruments that no one can understand.

All of Wall Street has been on a money drunk. Now comes the hangover.

This is what Inflation is Made Of

I understand that there needs to be a coordinated effort across many central banks to steady this credit crisis. The move they have made to work together is great. Really.

But the side effect will be serious inflation. That's a whole lot of cash to be pumping into the world economy. The entire world is going to feel it.

The fallout from the world inflation is developing nations are not going to buy into the idea of globalization in the future. Nations are going to insist on their own food supplies being grown in their own countryside.

Further, we as a nation should be embarrassed that these socialist countries that we mock all the time are having to bail us out of our own foolishness and greed.