Economic Meltdown

Today as I drove through town, nearly half the stores were closed. The streets teemed with the unemployed; it was if 1/3 of the city was just walking around, 100,000 with nothing to do but loiter. Scarier still, people looked hungry. Like all they wanted was to work, and all they needed was a job, any job at all, so they could get food for their kids. Truth is, there was barely enough food on the store shelves, thanks to the drought in the Midwest, and people with jobs could barely afford it. I couldn't believe how bad the economy had gotten.

Of course, none of this happened. Well, not since the Great Depression was at its worst in the 1903’s. Since then, we haven’t had a really scary economic crisis. In lieu of actual suffering, now we make up our crises so we can over-react and buy the swill the media sells. We are a cowardly lot, and one that loves the drama.

The economy is in a recession. That’s a fact. A financial panic? Absolutely. An “economic meltdown?” No, not quite. Actually, not even close, though I ripped that tag directly from a headline. Unemployment is up to 7%, headed for 8. It will probably even hit 9. Of course, no one mentions that during the economic boom of the 90’s, most of Europe still had unemployment from 10-11%. That’s how bad unemployment is now, only 20% lower than Europe’s in the good times. So let it be written, American capitalism is a failure!

Actually it’s not. True, the stock market is down 40%. As Ronald Reagan said, "Never confuse the stock market with the economy." Though he and I have some different ideas about economic policies, he was right; they aren’t the same. The market moves in minutes and hours, and even in seconds. The economy moves in months and years, and even in decades. So with the huge drops in the market, you might expect some huge fundamental change in retails sales the month that preceded the crash. You’d be right, and today everyone “oohed” and “ahhed” at the 1.2% drop in September. That’s right, just over a 1% drop from the biggest consumer spending September in history and people think the end has arrived. For every 100 big screens that would have sold, one didn’t. For every 1,000 shirts that would have been sold, only 988 were bought. Oh, Lordy, kill me now.

We are not in the midst of a plunge either to mercantilism or to communism. We’re okay. Something around 90% of the country made the same amount of money this month that they did last month. Heavens to Betsy. Americans are still rich. Americans are still fat. Americans still run the world. Any one who says differently is selling something. More specifically, selling a newspaper.