say it ain’t so,… TED?

I came across this article and thought it was very important.

It seems watching the Dow isn’t as critical as watching TED. I didn’t even know this number existed, but it does and it is important:

“There’s a lot that’s ill-advised about that habit, but, most importantly, attending to the ups and downs in the Dow won’t tell you much about the current financial crisis. Ours is a crisis of credit: Financial firms are unwilling to lend to each other (at all-but-exorbitant rates) for fear that borrowing firms may fail or that they themselves may need the cash to fend off their own crisis.”

click HERE for the article.

breath of fresh air

Last week I wrote about the bailout being about credit and the banks not making loans, and how this effects us. Today, an amazing article came by me about a town in Vermont that is dealing with this financial turmoil in a pretty revolutionary way.

They are coming together as a community.

Not only that… but they are focusing on my favorite topic: FOOD!!

“Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.”

The article illustrates a truly inspirational way to come together as a group and collectively save ourselves from economic hardship. I think we could all learn an amazing lesson from this.

there’s a whole in my bucket, dear henry

I started writing this essay immediately after the defeat of the first Bailout Bill. I have since revised parts, but if there seems to be anything “old news”, understand that I may not have kept up with the hundreds of news items about this topic over the last few days. I still think this is a hugely important topic and essay. So, here it is… enjoy!

As I sit and watch the fallout of the defeat of the first Bailout Bill and the rise of the second, as described by the media, I can’t help but realize, once again, we the people are being cheated.

A few days ago, for the first time, in a long time, our elected officials voted to defeat the “bailout bill” because of the voice of the citizenry. For the week prior or so, their offices had been flooded with letters on a magnitude of 20 to one against the bailout bill. Whether the defeat was caused because of hurt feelings, or the “herd mentality” of freshman officials, by the sheer fact that it was defeated, the constitution seems to have been honored for the first time in eight years.

However as I watch the media cover this story, I can’t help but think that we, the citizens, now have to face a terrible, hurtful backlash. We are being told, outright, that we are unintelligent and naïve and didn’t understand what the bill was designed to do. We are being told that we are incapable of understanding the workings of Wall Street; therefore we should trust our leaders to make that decision for us.

I want to help you understand a simple fact. The defeat of this bill means that credit will be affected, i.e. it will not exist. But, please do not make any mistake about this, credit, despite what your “leaders” have told you, does NOT equal economy.

Credit is an extension of your purchasing power. And, hopefully the following will help to explain why your elected officials care so much about credit and why they are duping you into believing it is the same as economy.

Credit is essential to the survival of the upper class. They make things; cars, homes, clothing. Through marketing, they have made it desirable for you (the middle class) to own these things. Through supply and demand, the prices are inflated, therefore you can’t afford these items simply by working. Credit was created. You take a loan out to afford what you want to get. Since you have to pay this loan off with interest you have to keep working and working and working. The upper class has won because not only are they getting money from the inflated value of goods, but they are also getting money because of interest rates applied to the loan.

(A little side note: I do not believe that credit was created under malicious or conspiratory circumstances. Credit worked when you were going to the local mercantile to borrow seeds, which upon harvest, you would pay back. I think that it has evolved to be a plague on our society and a way to keep the lower classes separate and never equal to those “in charge”.)

So, going on…. because you are working, you pay taxes, often at an unfair rate as compared to that of the upper class. The upper class gets tax incentives and right-offs that you do not get, as well as the fact that there are more of “us” then “them”. Therefore, the influx of money going into our reserve is our money. Those taxes go towards the support of the lower class, our infrastructure, our programs, etc., etc. But once again, the upper class has effectively been relinquished of its responsibility to provide; they make what the middle class wants to buy, who works to afford those goods, which puts money into the system, which allows for the stipends given to the lower class. The middle class is, quite literally, the whole backbone keeping this country afloat.

Here is another thing that credit does… it falsely inflates the price of goods. The more “spending power” the middle class has, the more the price of things becomes artificially high. If everyone in this country could only pay for what they honestly could afford, which I do not think is a bad thing, then prices would reflect their true value. But, what good is that to the person who has made that item. They want an inflated value, so they can make more money. This is why they have an insatiable desire to keep credit in its place.

Credit and the all things associated with the economy have become a vicious circle. We buy things that we can’t afford, so we work and work and work, to pay those loans off that keep growing and growing because of interest rates, so we keep working and working and working. But without credit, we will still buy. We will still need food, we will still need clothing.

The reason the officials and Wall Street and others want you to panic is because, right now, the cost of goods will reflect their accurate value. This means, chances are, you will be able to afford them without taking out a loan. Without that loan, the banks and institutions won’t make money. Therefore the upper class won’t make as much money. This means, they will have to participate in the financial wherewithal of this country. They will not be able to sit under their golden umbrellas, oblivious to what is going on. This will disrupt their way of life and they want to hold on to that for as long as they can.

For the last eight years, our administration has been banking on our lack of attention to what is going on. They have been getting away, literally, with murder, based on the fact that we have been too busy to understand or care about anything other than ourselves. I do hold us, the citizenry, responsible for a portion of what is happening. And, I do not want this most recent condemnation to alter our new participation.

Ever since the bill was defeated, all I have heard on the news is that we don’t know what is going on; that we are ignorant. Do not fall for this trap. It is simply a way for us to stop paying attention again, so the elected officials can get away with more and keep their livelihood in place. This is the time when we are starting to pay attention again. This is a time when we are looking at our elected officials and reminding them that they are our employees after years of them being allowed to get away with whatever they wanted to. Of course they are going to fight us on this. Wouldn’t you? But don’t let that fool you into apathy, again. Let this be the light that let’s you see what is truly going on.

Probably today, the second bill will be passed in the Senate. In order to appease the Republicans, more tax right-offs have been written in for the big businesses. And, to appease the Democrats, more incentives for going green have been written in. I guess time will tell whether this bill is effective. In the meantime, the money we worked so hard for to fill the reserve is gone. There is no other “bailout” after this. In my opinion, the only thing that will save us, on a personal level, is to hold back on our desire to buy things. Or, if you are going to buy something, please consider only buying what you can afford.

hit me baby one more time

As I look around and see the ever growing accumulation of stuff and the ever lessening role of integrity and values, I wonder what example we are setting for a children. Does our future hold hope, or are we doomed to have history repeat itself?

About a week ago, I was flying to Seattle and had the pleasure of sitting next to a woman and her four year old, very well behaved, child. After a while, the conversation turned to our shared beliefs about the environment. She shared with me that she had just read an article in which it outlined, that when she and I were growing up, it cost approximately $100K to raise a child from infancy through college. In contrast, today’s estimates are that it will cost anywhere from $300K to $500K to raise a child. Yes, I will agree that part of this increase is due to the cost of living increase. But, I wonder what percentage is due to the marketing campaign targeted at children.

When I was growing up things were so much different; I was not allowed to watch television unless it was educational, I had to go OUTSIDE to play, I had a clothing allowance, I had chores, my mom made lunch everyday and dinner every night (or tried to make dinner, if you know my mom)… and, I will note she was a single mom who at one time had two jobs while taking post graduate classes. I was blessed with a mother who was able to put me through private high school, and paid for my entire college education without me having to take out a student loan. We lived in one house; the one in which she still lives and is fully paid off. She’s had three nice cars. She wears Marc Jacobs and Cynthia Vincent. She’s up on all the latest Apple computers, iPods, and iPhones. And, she did this all on a Los Angeles high school teachers salary.

The only reason I bring this up is because I keep observing how children are raised, today. I do not have a child, and I can only imagine the joys and difficulties of having one. I feel as though parents and children are being marketed to so heavily to continue our consumerism without regard for the impact on the psychology of the individual or the detriment of our environment.

I intend to do a post about the fashion industry at a later date, but, as one example, just consider the clothing that is available to children now. There are a plethora of stores that didn’t exist before that specifically caters to the fashion of a child. When I was growing up we bought clothes twice a year. One time before school started and one time in the spring. We bought clothes that lasted and had a purpose; play clothes versus dress clothes. It was not the thing to go “hang out” at the mall. We wore clothes until they wore out and then we patched them up and gave them to someone to wear out even more. An $80 shirt… if such a thing existed….paid for itself based on the amount of times we wore it, dirtied it up, washed it and wore it again. Today, and $80 shirt for a TODDLER is the norm… thank you Gwen Stefani and James Pearse. I can only imagine that it is worn one time, before the child spits up on it and ruins it or it is out of style a month later. And the fact that we so easily purchase such items without thought is… shaming.

I used to have a clothing allowance. In order to have money go towards that allowance, I had to do chores. Serious chores. I was in charge of cleaning the house and doing the cooking. Once I EARNED the money, I could decide to spend the $25 on one item of that price, or I could save it over time to buy an item that was more expensive. This allowance did not include school clothes, which was a uniform, and it did not include important event clothes like weddings, prom, or graduation. Needless to say, it taught me the value of a dollar. Today I look at children who have closets and closets full of clothes that are trendy or cool and have no longevity.

Another example of the industry of children is toys. Have you ever looked around and seen all the toys that children have? There are trucks, Barbie’s, buckets and shovels, action figures, yo-yo’s, dolls, and I don’t know what else. They have created furniture to house and store all of the toys children accumulate. First, we can discuss the psychology behind the supposed need for these toys. Is it really too dangerous to play outside or is that just the propagation of fear? What is the need for a child to have a toy for the beach? This toy will more than likely be used, maybe, twice, before the child grows out of it. Not to mention that it is interesting to me that you buy a toy when the beach, itself, is a toy. With creativity, tenacity, teamwork and good old labor, a sand castle can be built without a plastic bucket. And aren’t those same skills important to learn if you want to be a functioning member of society?

I can list many other examples of useless toys, or clothes, and site many examples where I could counter, that without either of the above, the child may be better off. So, I ask again, what are we teaching our children? First, disposability. When we buy things and allow our children to use them a very limited amount of time, we are saying it is okay to throw away useful goods. And, more importantly, we are telling manufacturers that they can keep making and marketing new ideas to us because we don’t support the concept of longevity anymore. There was a time when if you bought a television, you expected that television to last a very long time. And, guess what? It did! We demanded, industry supplied. Now, we are told to want cool, fast, hot, and cheap. We are letting the manufacturers tell us what to do, instead of the other way around. Why is it that we don’t let anyone else control what we do, unless it comes to consumer goods? An interesting point was offered in “Deep Economy” by Bill Mckibben. We have stopped trying to keep up the Jones’. Now, we try to keep up with the Hilton’s, the Lohan’s, the Simpson’s and the Richie’s. But, if you actually sat down and spent time with your neighbors, you would find out we are all pretty much in the same place.

Which brings me to my second point of what we are teaching our children; credit. Why did I bring up, earlier, all that information about my mom and her spending habits? I want to illustrate a point that my mother taught me. She does not buy anything that she doesn’t have the means to buy. She is not in debt. She actually has a nearly perfect… yep, PERFECT… credit score. She spends time evaluating what she needs versus what she wants. If she wants something, she determines where she has to sacrifice. She doesn’t pay the minimum on her credit card bill, she pays the whole thing. Unfortunately, I didn’t listen to her. I am a child of a generation that was marketed to, heavily. I thought why not buy something that I can afford in “three easy payments” cause I want it “NOW!”. I have learned my lesson and I am trying to remedy it by being a more active and aware consumer. I have written about it before, but I think a huge disservice to our country is that concept of credit and buying what we can’t afford. It has put us in a place where, because of our purchasing “power”, we are dependent on fossil fuels, we are supporting mass manufacturing in countries other than our own, and we have to work forever in order to pay off our debt.

My third, and last, point with the issue of the industry of children is that we are hurting the environment. You knew I was going to get here, eventually. But, seriously, think of all the toys that all the children on this planet own. Some of those toys have never been touched, some are trash because they broke upon opening the package, while some did an effective job of entertaining and educating the child for a long time. Most toys, I would venture to guess, upwards of 90% are made of plastic. Plastic is made using fossil fuels. But, more importantly, it never, ever decomposes. Never, ever. It never goes back to the soil and replenishes what we have taken. It sits in a landfill, while everything else around it is going back to the earth, plastic sits and waits. Oh, and let’s not forget to mention, it’s TOXIC!! So we are teaching our children to be in debt for the rest of their lives, to throw away whatever they don’t want anymore, to not care about the environment, and oh yeah, we are poisoning them!

So if you have or want a child, I urge you to look at what even the smallest of actions is teaching them. You may think it is harmless, but your child is learning from you. Your child looks up to you and looks to you for direction. Don’t you want to be the best person you can, so your child can be the best person they can?

p.s. I love you, Mom.