Missing Link

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about money, spending, budgets, etc.   This has been prompted by the global financial crisis.  It started with me looking at my own spending, money and budget – looking at where I could do better (there are plenty of areas…).   I then turned to the government, with it’s HUGE deficit and the national debt which grows by staggering proportions every day.

One of the big problems that caused this crisis is the housing bubble that burst in the recent past – which was driven by the subprime mortgage industry.    This was an industry that, essentially, let people (temporarily) live beyond their means.   And, ironically, that’s exactly what caused the whole industry to implode in such a spectacular fashion that it took several Wall Street investment banks, and several regional banks, along with it (not to mention the rest of our economy…).

One of the things I was taught by my parents is that it’s important to live within your means – essentially the principle that you have to have a budget, and your spending cannot be more than your income.  Preferably your spending is LESS than your income so that you’re saving money and – if you’re smart – letting it work for you (stocks, mutual funds, however you want to do it) via long term investments.  That’s how I was raised, and that’s how I operate my finances.

So, with that in mind – and with my thoughts turned to our government – I had to ask:  Why doesn’t our government do that?

It would seem that our government hemorrhages money.  It’s horribly fiscally irresponsible, and yet we’re looking at THEM to answer our financial crisis?  A group of people who have an addiction to spending money (and who wouldn’t if they could just keep printing more!?) are supposed to tell us how to fix the economy?   Excuse me for being blunt but I have to ask – are we all retarded?!

The solutions proposed are nothing more than a band-aid.  They MAY fix problems temporarily, but if I were to guess I’d say the problem will resurface in the not-so-distant future and likely things will be much worse than they are now.  

We NEED to reel in our leaders and demand fiscal responsibility.  Our spending is skyrocketing, yet very few are seeing any benefit from it.  Is our national infrastructure better?   Have we fixed health care, or schools?  Have we made any inroads in helping people in our own country?   No – we haven’t.

Schools are worse, health care is lagging, unemployment rates are up, our economy is going south. 

Where are we spending these billions upon billions of dollars?   

Well, recently, to bail out companies that took unacceptable risks and made incredibly poor decisions.  Decisions and risks that were made possible by….. OUR GOVERNMENT!  

We’re also spending BILLIONS a month in Iraq to wage a war very few here really want to be involved in, for some reason that is nebulous and difficult to really ascertain. Does anybody really know what we’re even doing over there anymore? They have a government and, presumably, a military and police force… so why are we doing all the work for them? More importantly, why are you and I paying for it?

We need to take some of the power back from the government, demand that they live within their means, and hope and pray we can get some fresh minds in Washington who aren’t going to keep on going with the status quo and will actually do their jobs – work for the people.