Don't Fix What Ain't Broke

This is a tightly guarded secret. Nobody in the media will report it: the American economy is not broken. 

Sure, almost every measurable metric is down: consumer confidence, spending, travel, and so on, and so forth. But I don't think there is anything wrong with it considering that instead of spending, Americans are finally putting something into their personal savings.

Sure, a part time house painter making $20,000 per year can't get a mortgage to buy a 900 square foot shack in CA for $350,000. But I don't see a problem with that.

Sure, America isn't buying 17,000,000 cars a year any more. And we aren't chewing through 1.15 billion cell phones a year any more. But I don't see a problem with buying a new car every ten years and a new cell phone every two or three.

America isn't broken. We are finally saturated. After a decade of over-buying, over-spending, over-consuming, we have stopped being frivolous.We don't need four cars, eight TVs, a media room, or a TIVO that can record every episode of Sapranos and stream it to a four hundred dollar iPhone.

Our politicians don't want us to save. They want us to take out the fattest mortgage possible and build another Super-Sized McMansion.  They don't want us to conserve. They want us to consume. Spend. Spend. Spend. Deplete our every resource. Debt is good. Debt is American.


It isn't a recession. It is a return to normallacy. But the media won't say that. And our elected officials deny it with every breath.

I have a suggestion for them: don't fix what ain't broke. The sheeple are fleeing the Imaginary Land of Milk & Honey. They're finding more familiar pastures. Less expensive ones.

I, for one, am not looking back.