Is This Bailout Rotten To The Core?

Well it looks like we are on the verge of the biggest bailout in US history and taking a serious step toward socializing our banking system!

I could go on and on with the details of how we got here, who's to blame, blah, blah, blah, but what we really need to do is take it down to the basic fact that THE US CONSUMES MORE THAN IT SAVES!

We buy more stuff from other nations than we export and pay for it all with money we also have to borrow from other nations. And our government pays for the "empire" and buys votes (via entitlements) by printing money from thin air and running up the national debt. The sum total is that we are quickly become an empty hull with a devaluing dollar that is continuing to be "worth-less" everyday.

I can't help but to think of an old Walnut tree we had to cut down when we put up our new home. It was a big old tree. Its burly large trunk proudly held up its wide spreading branches over the decades of growth. It produced a large number of Walnuts each year, so many in fact that it seemed I could never possibly pick them all up. We enjoyed the protection it gave us from the sun on Summer days and I was truly sad that we had to take it down. In fact, we decided to that after we cut it down we would have the wood crafted into furniture. We thought it would be a fitting legacy and a way to enjoy its strength and beauty for years to come. However we where in for an unpleasant surprise.

When we went to cut down the tree we discovered it was rotten through out, in fact it was HOLLOW inside! It was such a shock! How could it even stand up, let alone produce leaves or even nuts! It seemed so strong, however we could have almost pushed it over! And as to the nuts, we had never tried to eat them, so we didn't know that it was also producing rotten nuts! If I had bothered to scoop them all up and harvest them, I would have gotten a whole lot of nothing.

What does this have to do with the current economic crisis? I think of it as a metaphor for what is happening to our country. We look so strong, successfully, affluent on the outside. If you judged us by our commercials, movies, magazines etc. you would be convinced we are a great and strong society. But I am afraid that this may all be hiding a terrible truth. I shudder at the thought that we might be a hollow core, that the values at the heart of this great nation have rotted away and been replaced with decadence, corruption and decay.

I LOVE THIS COUNTRY and I pray for it each day. I still believe that the majority of Americans are good people that want to do the right thing, but we have lost our way. We live in an instant gratification society. We need everything all the time and the idea of having to wait or work hard and save for something is almost laughable to all too many.

Of course I am speaking generally and I am not proposing that we cast aside physical comfort or material goods to live like the Amish, I simply mean that we must learn to live below our means or at least with in them. It is the money that Americans put away in their savings that provide the basis of the money that is later lent to businesses or to the government, in the form of bonds, to fund the building of our infrastructure. When Americans don't save to make purchases, or for a rainy day, then there isn't enough money available to meet the large demand for credit, so we must borrow from foreign nations or turn on the old printing press at the Fed and make more. If we have no savings, it is also more difficult for us to survive lean times. Of course the whole of our economy is more complicated than this, but the idea of "savings" and "loans" is a basic one.

Walnut trees offer the first signs that Winter is just around the corner. It is one of the first trees to loose its leaves in the Fall and their naked branches always make me a bit sad. I still believe that America is the greatest nation on Earth and that we are NOT yet rotten to the core. We CAN shed off the dead or dying and put on fresh leaves and grow even stronger, we just have to remember OUR roots. We are the most productive people on Earth, and currently still mostly free to live our lives in peace. I encourage everyone to be more prudent and less impulsive. You might just ENJOY a more simple life and you will surely relish those new purchases more when you have worked hard for them!

May our nation's core be strong and its "fruit" sustain us!