Mike, IMHO, folks taking on debt that may burden them for life and the financial sector overextending its highly leveraged resources in speculative activities is certainly not the best thing for the country longer term. So, if we are halfway decent human beings, we have to hope for something soon that stops the runaway train and brings the economy into some sort of balance. It would be nice if there was a prescription that only took several billion from the scamsters who set the Ponzi Scheme in motion, but it never seems to work that way. We had it last year with the LTCM flim flam, but Greenjeans bailed out the fat cats who financed them without requiring any kind of penalty for recklessness.
So, until the reckless are chastened and the herd frightened, the pain from the inevitable rebalancing keeps growing in magnitude. Hopefully, we will not get hit the way Japan did, but, given the nature of the American economic animal, I fear our crash will be worse than Japans. Hope not, but the longer it takes to happen, the worse it will be. |
