Thoughts On Finance

It seems that although trying to report the facts, the news media is being told to keep a positive spin on the financial world, and focus on the positive as opposed to the negative when it comes to money matters.  Unfortunately, as the end of the year figures become public, there is no where for American’s to hide, we are in some serious trouble.  Unemployment statistics are rising each month, sales in all the major retailers are down, and people who have their money in the stock market are panicking and with good reason.  Yesterday, Barack Obama addressed the country talking about the financial crisis and said that Congress must act quickly to put a plan into effect or things are going to plummet.  I don’t think that Congress knows how to act quickly, and I also think that they are at a loss as to what to do.  I don’t know that the incoming President has all the answers, as a matter of fact, I don’t think that anyone does.  It is like when you overspend for years, and then you lose your job, basically we are up a creek.  All the bailouts in the whole world are not going to stop us from going into a Depression in this country.  You can’t just undo all the mistakes that have been made overnight, and no one should expect that from anyone including the new president.  The one thing that I know is that we need to start tightening the belts on spending all around.  There is no need for spending money like we do in this country, and it is really time for us to look at our “budget” which is far from balanced and stop spending money that we don’t have.  This country does not need small cutbacks, we need to cut back in all areas and start using the excess to knock down some of this debt that we have accumulated.  It won’t happen overnight, but working together with a clear understanding of the hole that we all collectively have created, means we start to put this horrible financial crisis behind us.

It may be a long haul for the American public, but we can all do our part.  Volunteer time, money or whatever resources you have to help others if you are not one of the one’s in need.  You could need help in the future, so keep in mind that what you put out there comes back to you ten fold.  We need to help each other, just like we did following 9/11.  We need to unite and show the world what American’s are made of, and it isn’t money.