Our Financial Mess is Bigger Than You Think

March 2008
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Our Financial Mess is Bigger Than You Think

31 March 2008

George Rebane

Most of us concerned about the future of the Republic have been following the subprime mess and its larger implications for our nation and way of life. For those passengers not concerned about why the cabin floor is beginning to tilt, this is the time to hit the exit button and go find an empty deck chair.

Michael Lewitt of Harch Capital has written an extremely well-composed analysis of the ragged edge on which we find ourselves financially, and a prescription for how to put ourselves back on a firm footing. This piece is especially important now that Secretary of Treasury Paulson is proposing the next pallet of palliatives to fix the US financial system. Whatever will be implemented will affect all of us. Lewitt’s article, ‘How To Fix It’, is not a sound bite but grist for the serious reader. You may not agree with all of it – it shakes some of my long-held beliefs – but it is an education about the edge of our financial cliff and also a stake in the ground. And as such, it marks a place to take a stand and communicate your own thoughts to the local politician who in all likelihood doesn’t have a clue about what is going on and just keeps an eye on the polls. Well, here’s your chance to find out how you want to affect the polls.

Kudos to John Mauldin for making this piece of clear thinking available to wider audiences.

PS. Check out this little piece and glue it together with Lewitt’s article.

Posted in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Happenings, Investing, Our Country

2 responses to “Our Financial Mess is Bigger Than You Think”

Scott Obermuller

31 March 2008

Just had a phone conversation with a friend about all of this. Wondering what can be done with the finances that we still can control and so on. I’m afraid that we (America) have already gone off of the financial cliff. The mass of what goes over the edge is so vast, the velocity (at present) so slow and the distance to the bottom is so great, that the interval is rather quiet, actually. The current financial noise is more about the intense friction at the bottom that is having to bear the weight at the lip of the precipice at the moment. This country has become so adept at producing money from nothing, that we convinced ourselves it would just continue forever. From Social Security to home equity loans, we prided ourselves on one fabricated scheme to the next. The idea of earning money through hard work and the production of wanted and needed goods became, well, shall we say – old fashioned and Calvinist. We were all too clever by half for all of that. There is still an immense engine of industry and production in this country that carries as best it can the remaining loafers, leeches and looters, but no motor can work past it’s capacity for long. We can shuffle the deck chairs, as recently announced, by giving more power to the very intitutions that helped to bring us to this condition, but until we allow the failed to actually fail and have the valueless things de-value, we will only be greasing the skids to quiet the noise at the bottom edge of the falling giant.

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Mike McD

01 April 2008

Ditto to Scott O’s comments. Thanks George and Scott O.

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