It is Not in Our Nature

Finally, the data has caught up to reality, Americans woke up to the news today that 8 years of wealth gains have been wiped out. Never mind that the Dow Industrials have been hovering at year 2000 levels for almost a year declining almost 50% in value or that the country has been in a recession for a year.

It takes a while for Americans to come to terms with the facts of economic life; though things are bad, none of us is really willing to clamp down completely. We do want to believe that things will get better; who wants to be the doom and gloom person this year, repeating time after time that things will not be getting better this year, which unfortunately is the truth, or try to remain optimistic, a difficult feat.

Americans seemingly have beleaguered expectations. Everyone needs economic assistance, the Government cannot come up with an effective stimulus plan and the stimulus plan will ultimately help those who were the most egregious. The banks have behaved terribly and have received trillions of dollars so that they can survive, the homeowners who overburdened themselves who now loudly claim that the banks recklessness in approving these unsustainable loans assisted their demise, who will be responsible?

What Americans have to accept is that it took almost a decade for the country to wind up in this position; it cannot be solved in a few months or even one year, no matter how much money the government throws at the problem. America does not have much patience; they want it all fixed now. This will be the first time these generations are subjected to hard times and we don't know what it means to sacrifice or anything remotely similar. It is not in our nature.