Americans these days are concerned, or downright fearful, of what the future may hold. With the current economic situation and all of the unrest around the world, we have a reason to be concerned. This is not 1950 any more. We do not have a lot of confidence in our leaders, our economy, or even that we will have a job tomorrow. The era of "buy what you want, when you want it" is over.

Most people aren't buying big ticket items any more. Existing home sales are way down. Car sales are down. People are not eating out as much. Everyone is trying to find ways to save money.

For businesses, that means not hiring any new employees or in some cases, laying off. For the working class, that means eating more Mac and Cheese instead of grilling steaks every weekend. We try to find less expensive ways to entertain ourselves. The big problem with this is that it is a vicious cycle that just feeds into itself. Say you own a moderately priced, sit down restaurant and you have 12 employees, 3 cooks/chefs, 6 servers, 2 busboys and a hostess. You have owned this business for several years and have always managed a reasonable profit. Suddenly, the banks are not issuing small business loans and you need a new grill. You have the choice of doing without the equipment, buying it from your own salary, or getting it fixed as best you can. You decided to get it fixed and hope you have enough profit in the next couple of months to be able to buy a new one. Then one or two of the major employers in your community begin to lay off portions of their work force. Those people will have a hard time finding new jobs in the current economy so they will stop eating out. Your business drops off. You change your server scheduling because you don't need all of the wait-staff standing around getting paid with nothing to do. They all get fewer hours and fewer tips. So their personal spending is affected which affects other businesses. Your business slows to the point where you have no choice but to lay off 2 of the servers and 1 of the cooks. So now you have 9 employees. During the busiest prime time rush, your service is slower because you have less help. This causes customers to not come to your restaurant as often. Less business means you either have to raise prices or lose money. Raising prices causes fewer customers, who are also trying to save money, but losing money means that you cannot afford to upkeep equipment, buy quality ingredients, or pay a decent wage. You have no choice but to close your doors. Now there are 9 more people out of work.

All of these things are inter-dependent with every other business in the community. If even 1 business goes under, it effects everyone. And this is happening all over the country. And small communities are being hit the hardest. They are the ones who can least afford for a business to close it's doors.

People are scared that if the economy doesn't get better, all of the jobs in the US with the exception of teachers, public safety(police and firemen) and union jobs (which are protected by the big wigs in Washington) will simply go away. The jobless numbers that we hear about on the news are ONLY the new unemployment claims, not those who have been unable to find a job for the last 18 months.

But even so, you think 10% isn't a bad unemployment number. But think of it this way. That is 1 out of every 10 people you know has just gotten laid off. You know 30 people? 3 of them got laid off this month. And the next month, 3 more get pink slips, and so on. Eventually, most of the people you know will be without a job. Some, maybe half, will be able to find a job of some sort, but it will probably not be for the same pay they were getting before and it probably will not be in their chosen career. It is just a job to keep the bills paid. And it will take them longer to get that job because employers do not want to hire over-qualified people for entry level positions. And there is a lot of competition for every job opening.

Is it any wonder people are nervous? According to the US Department of Labor, 14.6 Million people in the US, and 6.6 Million of those have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. Don't believe me? Here is the press release from the DoL dated Aug 6, 2010. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm .

Does anyone honestly think that 14.6 million jobs will miraculously appear in the US so these people can go to work? Not very likely.

This Bailout Thing Has Got To Stop!

There are a few things that just really set me off. Government getting in my business, someone telling me how to raise my kids, and people begging for my tax money that don't deserve it.

This morning I heard of some people who are asking for Federal Bailout money. There is a small town in Georgia, a village really, with less than 200 people, who are asking for millions of dollars of MY tax money so they can put in Solar traffic lights, plug in stations for electric golf carts, and an EcoMuseum among other things. Now my question to them is...Why? Does this town have such a high electric bill from their one traffic light that they are having trouble paying it? Is there a large number of golf carts in this little hamlet in Georgia? And would a museum even generate enough income to pay the one employee it would take to run the thing?

Or maybe it is just the prospect of free money that caused them to stick out their hand? I find it almost absurd that the Bank Bailout Package, which started out as an obscene $900 Billion is going to be used by every group of 3 or more people as an excuse to do stupid things. I was opposed to the original bailout to begin with. It is time for the greedy folks to pay the piper. They have been bilking the common joe for decades, and now that they have gotten "caught", they are whining about how it wasn't their fault. If any of these companies had a shred of common sense to begin with they would not have employed the business practices that lead to their downfall. It is their own danged fault they are going under. Have none of these people ever taken an economics class? Interest rates that border on usury, giving loans and credit to people who don't have jobs, giving multiple mortgage loans to people without verifiable income, robbing Peter to pay Paul, shipping jobs overseas and keeping Americans either underemployed or overpaid. None of these things are good business practices. When the average American Adult is more than $10,000 in debt, not counting their mortgages, you should know that there is a problem.

And now the same people who have killed us as a nation are wanting the taxpayer to pay them for being stupid? Just where do they think all of this money is going to come from? Can we just pull BILLIONS or TRILLIONS of dollars out of the air and say, "Here ya go. We are sorry it isn't more?"

There are only a couple of ways the government can get enough money to pay these people off. One is to raise taxes. Americans are already under such a tax burden that the average worker only sees maybe 60-70% of their paycheck. And if we add more taxes to pay for the bailout, it will suck even more out of our paychecks. The major problem with that idea is that most people are living paycheck to paycheck as it is. So people can't afford to buy anything, including food. Or they default on their loans and credit cards and file bankruptcy. Less people buying things means less being sold. That is bad, very bad, for retailers and manufacturers, Then they go bankrupt and lay off or fire employees. That causes more people to not be able to pay their bills. See the cycle here?

Or, the federal reserve can just print more money. Yeah, lets do that! Big mistake. Our money isn't really worth anything anymore since it isn't backed by anything but the good name of the United States. All of that gold sitting in Fort Knox is just sitting there useless. Used to be a time when the Fed would only have enough currency floating around the US equal to the value of the gold in the Federal Reserve. That kept our dollar worth something. We knew that each and every US dollar anywhere on earth was equal to a piece of the gold bars in Kentucky. That isn't the case anymore. We dropped the gold standard sometime back in the 80's, I think. Since then we have just been printing money to be printing money. It isn't really worth anything except in it's rarity. If we print more for the sake of the buyout, each piece of currency will be worth less and less. So it will take more of them to mean anything. That is called inflation. And if we actually print enough for the bailout, that will be called runaway inflation. Yes, boys and girls, if we inject $900 Billion new dollars into the economy just to pay people for being stupid, it will cost $10 for a loaf of bread, if you can find a bakery that is still in business. Hamburger, which is already $3.00 a pound will probably be over $15. And for people who are already out of work, and behind on their bills, how will they live?

All of this just burns my tail feathers. If corporations hadn't gotten greedy and made bad decisions, and if people in general hadn't taken on more debt than they could pay and banks encouraging them to take on more, none of this would be an issue.

And maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be lambasted all over the world for being the largest consumer on the planet.

It just makes my teeth hurt.

The Bail out is a bad idea

Well, IMHO, all of this is just a way to give corporate CEOs that don't have enough brains to come in out of the rain, much less run a company, a great big paycheck to get out of the business. There is no way that any right thinking business person would have approved all of those high risk loans without some sort of greed coming into play.

If your mortgage debt is more than 30% of your income, you will have a hard time paying for it. If you have several mortgages, like for flipping houses, with adjustable rates, you will be just buggered if you can't sell them fast enough. Any bank that would give more than 2 mortgages to a single individual is just asking for trouble.

As far as I am concerned, the banks were asking for this by their own greed.

Now how does that affect the rest of us? Badly. The banks don't have any money to loan, so getting a loan for improvements like new fencing or upgrading that tractor will be tough. And the really bad part is that when a bank fails, businesses who depend on those banks do not have the operating capital it needs to keep the doors open. So there are fewer jobs. Fewer jobs means more people defaulting on their mortgages. Vicious cycle.

As to a bail out...hmmm.. .well, that is a tough one. Should we reward the banks who gave all of the risky loans in the first place? Should we bail them out so that businesses across the country can keep the jobs that we all depend on in the long run? Tough call. Personally, I think we should just suck it up and take the massive hit to the economy and rebuild it the same way we did after the Great Depression. I do not want my tax dollars lining the pockets of some Wall Street desk jockey who liked to play at short selling. And if we do this bail out, you can guarantee that our grandchildren' s grandchildren will still be paying this thing off.

Washington can talk all it wants about $700 BILLION but to them, it is just transfering numbers from one column in a spreadsheet to another column. It doesn't really mean anything. There is no actual transfer of funds. And the rich get richer. And we get to pay for it.