Advice for this holiday: Considering the consequences.
By Daniel at 25 November, 2009, 11:29 am
This message is directed at the truly middle class workers out there. You know who you are. You’ve managed to evade unemployment (My apologizes for those of you who are out of work but have rainy day funds enough to get by. You’ve joined the ranks of the poor, but your wallet doesn’t know it yet.) You drive a car that could be repossessed at a moment’s notice if you missed a payment, and you live in a house that is likely worth quite a bit less than you paid for it.
Now I want you all to consider the consequences of what you may or may not be doing this holiday season. Because if you are planning to acquiesce to the “spirit of the season” and go out and spend money you don’t have, on things neither you or your family need when you could very well be out of work in 2010, please think again. This financial leaders of this nation need a good loud wake-up call. The stock market is already inflating a brand new asset bubble and it needs to be popped before things get much further out of hand. The ONLY way this will happen is if you and the rest of those who are tenuously holding on to a slippery spot on the great ice burgh that is middle class America snap your wallet shut and just say “no.” No to the “doorbusters”, no to the”sales,” no to the silly jewelry commercials, and no to the “bargain” big screen TV.
I know, some of you are thinking, “but the little ones, it’s Xmas!” Fine, grab a few cheap toys off the shelves at Big Lots (didn’t we used to call these stores the “5 &dime”?) and put’em under the tree if you must. If they are old enough to complain, they are old enough to remember that you’ve probably given them anything they want or need over the course of the year anyway. Hell, if you really think about it, Xmas hasn’t been a big deal for kid’s personal economy since the first Starbucks opened in your neighborhood.
The fact is, its time to scare the beejeezuss out of the hedge fund managers and the rest of the elite investment community in this country. Let them know that unemployment of 10+% (20% if you omit the fuzzy math used by Washington) means no profits (holiday or otherwise) for ANYONE. They need to realize quickly that they have pushed the economic tachometer so far into the red that they had better do some preemptive hiring to keep the whole thing from blowing up.
Now some of you are going to say, “but without consumer spending even more jobs will be lost!” But the reality is that once the people who control the finances of the world take a step to the edge of economic collapse and look into its ugly gaping maw, they’ll pull back. However, if we let them think that this country has adapted to their “new normal” of sky-high unemployment and frozen or falling wages and benefits, then that as they say will pretty much be that for middle class America. You won’t so much as make a peep if your company raises your health insurance premiums or cuts your 401kand makes you do the work of three people. You’ll just be happy to have a job. And that will be your legacy, and the legacy of your children for as far as the eye can see.
So put away that cash, you’re going to need it next year for sure anyway. And remember, Xmas may come but once a year, but economic tyranny can last a lifetime.
- Coventry
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