A Few Personal Politcal Thoughts

For people who don't like politics or any such thing-- skip this post. I am finding that as I get older the more important I find politics to be.

I want to just rant a little bit about the economy and what is being done about it. Every one knows that the economy is not doing very well. In fact, when economists were predicting that things would get better in both the job market and in the housing market things have actually gotten a little worse. I suppose, I am not too concerned about that. When I was a junior in high school and had a very brief overview class on American history, one of the things that I noticed was that about every 10 to 20 years the American economy fell into a recession. The worst, of course was the Great Depression that began in 1929. When, I was in high school in the early 90's, the American economy was in a recession. Where I lived it was really hard for a high school student to get a job because the 40 year old's in the area were looking for the same jobs. This recession began with a couple of things. There was a stock market crash in October of 1987 and the housing market seriously crashed in 1989. By the late 90's the nation had recovered. People were prospering. I got every job that I applied for, and there were help wanted signs every where. By 2000, the stock market was the highest in history. By 2001 housing prices were booming and housing were selling like crazy. People who paid too much for a house in 1988-89 made up for their losses by 2001. Yes, that is a long time. But if they did not have to move before then they were making $100,000 selling houses that they owed more money than they had paid for just 10 years previously. Because of free enterprise, America has always recovered from periods of recession.

This time around things are different. When houses started foreclosing and people were losing jobs the government stepped in to "help" with money borrowed from banks in countries in the Middle East and in China (which the tax payers are suppose to pay off.) Banks were "saved", big car companies were "saved", money has been given to people to get better cars and there was an $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers to "stimulate the economy". However, along with all of this spending has come a lot of laws. Big, free American banks and car companies, and mortgage companies are now owned and regulated by the federal government. Laws have been made that have changed the housing market and how it functions quite substantially. When we bought the house in 2004 and when we bought our current house this past April things were very different. So unlike the housing market crash in 1989 when people had to just suffer through their loss, the government has tried to make laws so that people do not have to suffer "ever again". But the housing market, the financial market and other big industries in America are no longer free. It will be a lot harder for the housing market to recover. Sure, people are being able to get out of foreclosures, and bankruptcy, but now we are all bound by laws that will change the way the economy works. In countries where the national government owns a lot of the businesses and regulates closely the financial market the people of the country suffer. They are not rich like in America. Everyone does not have a dish washer, cable TV and dessert every night-- even in other very wealthy countries. And that, in my opinion is what is going to happen to America. I suspect, if this continues, which it has been going this way for some time (not just with the Obama administration), our children and our grand children will not know the wealth that our generation has known.