The American Way?

Believe me when I say how sorry I am for all the people that are having financial difficulties at this time. Those folks that lost jobs, hours, reduced pay, etc. There is a story for all occasions. House values are upside down. Meaning the house is not currently worth what is owed on the mortgage. However in many cases that does not mean the house is not worth what the owner originally paid for the house. How many people have remortgaged and added debt to their house in the form of college loans, cars, credit card balances, trips and other short term debts. This is what the public was told to do. Borrow against your main long term investment because it had a lower rate and you could then afford the payments. Heck the value of your house was increasing at such a fast pace, many people refinanced numerous times adding mega debt. Then the marketplace has a ‘correction’ and lo and behold there is not enough equity to support the value. (This is not the case in most problem loans), but I would be interested to know what is that ratio? How many people have over financed their original debt and walked away with all the toys? The cars were ‘paid for’ in the house loan, so were the credit cards and all those purchases, except the final loan was never paid off. So not only, did the banks have to absorb the financial down turn but had to absorb the extras.
Now let’s look at this, the American government operates in a terrible deficit based upon unsound borrowing practices. They encouraged the banks to lend money in such a way as to promote indebtedness. We are short of jobs in the U.S., so let’s send more jobs over seas. We use energy at an alarming rate, but we buy the oil from overseas. We needed to bail out Wall Street so we borrowed the funds from our future; based upon future growth and the ability to repay at a later date. As the song goes; ‘When Will We Ever Learn?’
There needs to be a real shake up in our society. One that not only means we have to live within our means, but one that goes farther and says ‘we must live as if the future depends on the actions of the present.’ Our debts must be controlled; we must keep our jobs in the U.S. With out employment we can not get out of the fix we created. Health care needs to be corrected to allow growth. Taxes cuts need to be implemented to keep and grow the job market. Incentives packages need to be extended to employers to keep jobs from going abroad in exchange for guarantees of goods and services and future employment to those in the communities.
We need to change the American way back to the days of our parents, and their parents. Learn from the past, Pride in American goods and services. Growth of the economy through manufacturing, and industrial growth is essential. New business strategies, and techniques need to be established, growth of sound energy practices, expansion of natural gas, solar, nuclear power and finally business loyalty are imperative to sustaining growth and eliminating the debt. Lastly, I call on the government to stop the political wrangling and holding the American public at bay with all the earmarks and sloppy backroom government deals. They need to work together to pull us out of this hole that we are in. How we got there is not the point, the fact we are in this mess is the important issue. Let’s work as we did after the last crisis in 9/11, face this crisis head on and getter done!