It's Time To Pay The Bills
By David Ignatius
WashPost
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Great Depression seared some life lessons into my parents' generation. My father hasn't had a mortgage in decades, even though his children keep telling him about the tax advantages. He buys store-label brands, clips the "sale" coupons out of the newspaper and wears well-mended suits he bought 50 years ago.
Frugality is a lifestyle for his generation. Their pleasure isn't in consuming, but in creating and saving. And their abiding conviction is that you have to take care of yourself, because no one else is going to bail you out.
What lessons, I wonder, will the great downturn of 2008 teach our children? Obviously, the answer depends on how bad things get. This is a global cataclysm that's more vivid in the headlines than in most people's pocketbooks. Unemployment remains below 7 percent, and gas prices and mortgage rates are down. The crisis is still more like a dark thundercloud than a pelting hurricane.
So let's assume, first, that the bailout actually works. Under that strategy, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson have, in essence, offered free credit to anyone who can use it. Name the economic sector, and they're prepared to rescue it from its own mismanagement. After spending the first nine months of the year hosing Wall Street with cash, they are now turning the spigot toward Main Street.
(More here.)
WashPost
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Great Depression seared some life lessons into my parents' generation. My father hasn't had a mortgage in decades, even though his children keep telling him about the tax advantages. He buys store-label brands, clips the "sale" coupons out of the newspaper and wears well-mended suits he bought 50 years ago.
Frugality is a lifestyle for his generation. Their pleasure isn't in consuming, but in creating and saving. And their abiding conviction is that you have to take care of yourself, because no one else is going to bail you out.
What lessons, I wonder, will the great downturn of 2008 teach our children? Obviously, the answer depends on how bad things get. This is a global cataclysm that's more vivid in the headlines than in most people's pocketbooks. Unemployment remains below 7 percent, and gas prices and mortgage rates are down. The crisis is still more like a dark thundercloud than a pelting hurricane.
So let's assume, first, that the bailout actually works. Under that strategy, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson have, in essence, offered free credit to anyone who can use it. Name the economic sector, and they're prepared to rescue it from its own mismanagement. After spending the first nine months of the year hosing Wall Street with cash, they are now turning the spigot toward Main Street.
(More here.)
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