I can Fix the economy in 10 minutes…ok, 11 minutes

I’m tired of watching the news and seeing reports about the economy EVERY night. Do people actually think the economy is going to radically change in the next day or two? Are people that dumb? Am I that dumb for asking these questions? Yes on both counts.

Look, it took years to screw the economy up and it’s going to take years to fix it. Harping on it every day (like watching the stock market every day) doesn’t do anything, although it does speak volumes about the mentality of the average moron. We are in for some rough times the next year or two but we will survive it, as we historically always have. Here are a few tips the media typically misses. Read these and then stop watching the news.

1. This is not the first time the stock market has crashed. If the US survived WWI, the great depression, WWII, the cold war, Vietnam, the oil embargo and inflation of the ‘70’s, Reaganomics, the crash of ’87, parachute pants, the recession of the early 90’s, the dot com bust, and 9/11, then we can survive this. I’m not ignoring this problem, just being realistic.

2. Learn from your mistakes. No one should be two paychecks away from losing it all, no matter how the economy looks. It is not now, nor has it ever been, ok to buy extra Christmas presents because “the market is up.” The same goes for buying a new car simply because you just got a raise, and no one should be buying a house with a mortgage based on the idea that future raises will make it affordable.

3. This is not the first time we’ve had a black president…oh wait, yes it is. So what? Once you think about it, that’s not really that inspiring.

4. Don’t think for a second that all of our problems come from a couple of big corporate bad guys. The American people have a bad habit of ignoring personal responsibility. Sure, banks were stupid for offering ARM loans in the first place, but they couldn’t sell them if nobody bought them. Absolutely no one needs a variable interest mortgage, or needs to borrow 125% of their homes value. People weren’t “taking advantage” of a good thing because there’s no benefit to doing it. Home values historically increase by about 4.25% a year. That’s it. Only an idiot would think that they could buy a house with no money down and somehow get rich from it 3 years later. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is (so refer back to tip #2).

Ok, now that you don’t need to watch the news anymore, you can spend more time reading.



…well, maybe not.