This Thanksgiving I Give Thanks to All of You Who Made this All Possible

This post over at the Mess That Greenspan Made blog is down right scary — by some estimates the potential cost of the bailouts will reach .5 trillion. Can we survive that? No way that is going to get paid back. Or this at Calculated Risk showing that the current bear market is the worst ever (on a percentage basis).

It seems to me that the genesis of this “crisis” was in the 1980s, the rise of yuppiedom, and has gotten progressively worse by an ever growing populous that more and more chose to finance their lifestyle with debt vs. wealth earned until it reached the point where people willingly paid ludicrous prices for houses, a college education, etc. For kids who came of age during this 28-year span, living on debt has been the norm. I feel the most sorry for them, the unwinding will be the hardest on them as they don’t know any better. But for the rest of us boomers who have witnessed, and in far too many cases gleefully participated in, the entire life-cycle of this debt-investment craze, I have little sympathy. Blame Wall St., bankers, financiers, etc. all you want but in the final analysis no one held a gun to your head, no one made you agree to pay a stupid price for your house.

Really, is cheaper housing such a bad thing? Maybe it is for you who listened to the self-interested persuasion of a realtor/agent, you who bought in to the ludicrous pricing and was hoping to retire on the sale of a house. But think past yourself (if you’re able). Think about your kids and your grandkids. Do we really want a future where so few can afford something as simple and as basic as a house? Do we really want to live in a nation so impoverished by desperate attempts to prop up prices that we know in our heart of hearts are insane, even still? Besides, we have truly important things to worry about, like a world wracked by global warming, the solutions to which will require personal sacrifice on a scale we of the post-war generations can hardly imagine, and an ability to think beyond our own selfish wants and desires.

But at the very least let’s not ever forget the people who got it right, early, when action could have made a difference:

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving.