WILL OUR THRIFTINESS LAST??

Ellen Goodman asks will our thriftiness last as long as the recession lasts or will we continue spending more than we have been in the past when the recession ends? Some of the people, such as Black stones group Chairman Steve Schwarzman publicly regrets a three million dollar birthday bash, a perfume mogul cancels a party at the Four Seasons in favor of a White Castle hamburgers at home, on fox "Secret Millionaire" fox's latest, worst reality show repents a private plane joy ride that cost $12,000 in jet fuel. we can tell the recession is bad when the rich start saving money. Now competitive consumption is being replaced by anxiety...buying hit bottom with the housing collapse, the stock market plunge, and the credit card crunch and the unemployment figures.

The fact is that when a rational response to the worst economic crises since the Great Depression, but when it starts affecting people whose mortgages and jobs are secure something else is going on behind the background.

We as a family are spending less and less...because we have less and less. when you start regretting that you have to spend money to go to the grocery store something is wrong. i used to go to dinner with a friend of mine like once a week, her and i haven't done that in like 6 months. i miss doing that dinner "date" but after you figured in the gas and the food i didn't have enough to get home.

But a part of my family is spending more and more, they live on credit cards and have the debit piling up on there kitchen counter so to speak. They live daily from credit card to credit card....just now they are starting to straiting up and fly right. With both of them working two jobs they are starting to get it under control.

Fatherly advice

The advice in the story Hamlet is very valuable and used often. The give every man your ear but tongue few, is used by me....thought i do love telling stories so it kind of contradicts it. The last situation I was in that I need to use some advice that was given to me was when I was at my aunts house for thanksgiving a few years back. I had met someone new and we got talking and they started saying there opinion on a politician and I just kept my opinion to myself(I didn't feel qualified to talk about politics) which kind of confused the guy because he likes picking at peoples brains and finding how the person thinks in a twisted way. So he didn't find out how i worked. He is an alright guy but hes twisted..and not in a good way. When he meets someone new he will talk about politics and about religion...both of which he has a distaste for, just to pick at the persons mind. So in the end I kept my opinion to myself and we had an alright fun time. Another situation where the advice had come in handy was when I met a new friend of mine. (so the fledgling quote will work.) I trusted him but he shouldn't have been trusted, so I learned that advice somewhat on my own. Ever sense then I've grown slightly paranoid about trusting new friends and losing my trusted ones. When I can give advice of my own to people I will, but I also tell them to use it sparingly........like when you use hot sauce, though strangely i use allot of hot sauce....

Revenge

I think people still use revenge to get what they want. i personally haven't....least that i can remember. some people see it as the only way to get what they want or to hurt someone like they have been hurt. Like the "Punisher" movies, the main characters family was killed so the main character chooses to exact revenge on the men who took his family and tried to kill him by taking the same things they took from him. When the Justice system fails people tend to want revenge expesually in a murder or rape case. some people want revenge when something special has been taken from them, such as a girlfriend or wife by a "bad" man. but in the end you usually get hurt worse/remains unchanged or get more taken from you.

"And Then There Was One" Distilling the Big Three into a single player could save Detroit.

The companies that once ruled the road are husks of the mighty institutions that they once were. Now they have less than half the U.S. auto market and will lose a combined $30 billion this year. Together the companies are burning through nearly $6 billion a month, and General Motors and Chrysler say that by the end of the year they will be bankrupt. They plan to head back to Washington this week to beg for a bailout.

There will be hurtles like a powerful union, strongly independent dealers and a complex network of suppliers. Simply if the enterprises continue to squabble it is likely to make matters worse. But there is a way to fix the prioblem. Chrysler, the weakest player, could fall, leaving the two other companies. GM and Ford could eventually end up together by choice or force of being broke.

The Past has shown companies grouping together. Like Boeing grabbed up all U.S. civil-aircraft business, acquiring its chief domestic rival McDonnell Douglas in 1997. That allowed Boeing to take on the true competition: Europe's Airbus. Beginning in 1986, more than 35 American steel makers went bankrupt. In 2002, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross agreed to buy up bankrupt LTV Steel, setting off a merger frenzy that saw 17 companies shrink down to three, while financial results reversed from a $1.1 billion loss in 2003 to a $6.6 billion profit in 2004. So if the companies choose to join together they chances for economic rise is great, as it has shown in the past.

I agree with Keith Naughton, if the companies join they can group their resources together and pull themselves out of there hole. sure the companies don't want to but if they don't get the bailout or the bail out fails they will surly have to collaborate. We need to start playing to win instead of trying to be the "top dog" of the auto sales in the U.S.

"Japan has 4 major automakers on the global stage: Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Mazda. Germany has 3 major auto companies: Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagon-Porsche (I put them together since Porsche is buying a controlling stake in VW). China has a multitude of automakers, but really a couple of powerhouses in Chery and SAIC. What do all of these companies have in common? They are protected and supported by their nation's governments. all of these automakers receive a great deal of support from their respective governments. Americans are foolish and naive if they truly believe that other countries approach their domestic industries on a "stand-alone, fail-alone" basis as the US seems to do. Other countries recognize that manufacturing is a vital component economically, psychologically, and from a national defense perspective. The United States must stop acting as if every other country is honorable and fair, and start playing to win. Only then can our automakers hope to compete on a playing field that is skewed at a global level, and not just on the dealer's lot."(From the comment section on the newsweek page.)

Programs honored for getting kids interested in college.

When a program gets honored for doing something such as getting students interested in doing to college it creates a "buzz" about going to college. The whole 'everyone is doing it so ill do it to' bit. I think that the statewide average for having a bachelor degree from college is 29.5% while Shasta county has 18.8%. The cost of living in California is much higher than in most other states, for example the minimum wage. so the students that want to go on to college lack the funds necessary to do so.

College OPTIONS was formed in 2003 and since then, college application submissions from the surrounding area has increased 33 percent. While the same time FAFSA submissions, which are mandatory for students seeking admission to University of California and the California State University systems, have gone up 27 percent. Currently, College OPTIONS has partnerships with and is supported by the McConnell Foundation, the University of California and the California State University systems, Simpson University, National University, Shasta College, College of the Siskiyous, the Shasta Union High School District and others. While the number for the actual students going to college is really unknown for it is hard to count. The Postsecondary Education Commission said 11.6 percent of the area's high school seniors continued on to college last year. But nearly every education official in the north state has called that number incorrect.

Over the years from when the pursuit for a higher education first started the ways of college have changed so much, the way we are weeded out to see if we are able to make it and how we are going to make it in to the college of out choice. If someone builds a UC in Redding the higher paying jobs will grow in numbers as the number of higher educated people increase. So the economy that is troubling us will subside some what. "Few college access programs served students in the north state region before College OPTIONS opened its doors," said Blake Ulveling, a spokesman for Campaign for College Opportunities. "The result (is) more students enrolling in college, more students becoming eligible to attend a CSU or UC and more students filling out the FAFSA."

The People that have the money to go out and get a college degree should, so that getting their degree helps the rest of the community so that the rest of us that are having a difficult time getting in to college are more apt to do so. College OPTIONS (and other programs such as gear up) have been honored by recognition by the community for there work in getting students going to college, or at least looking at college.

We cannot keep preaching to the world about democracy and capitalism while our own house is so wildly out of order.

Zakaria's premise that we, as a nation, must begin to save more and consume less. We as a nation are in a world of hurt we are hemmorging money for everything from the war on terrorism to the bail out of the stock market to the expending of money for out daily needs. We need to start saving and stop consuming as much from other countries. The money we have that we call our own is loosing value in the world market, but if we start saving our funds we will eventually get out of this financial slump. "As economist Jeffrey Sachs points out, "We've wanted lots of government, but we haven't wanted to pay for it." So we've borrowed our way out of the problem. In 1990, the national debt stood at $3 trillion. (That sounds high, but keep reading.) By 2000, it had almost doubled, to $5.75 trillion. It is currently $10.2 trillion. The number moved into 11 digits last month, which meant that the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of space to display the figures. Its owners plan to get a new clock next year." so in other words we are throwing salt on an open wound that's hemmorging money. "In the medium and long term, we have to get back to basics. Households, for instance, should save more. Governments should put incentives in place that make such savings more likely. The U.S. government offers enormous incentives to consume (the deduction of mortgage interest being the best example), and it works. We have the biggest houses in the world, the thinnest flat-screen TVs and the most cars. If we were to tax consumption and encourage savings, that would also work. Regulations on credit-card debt should be revised to ensure that people understand the risks and costs of these instruments. Moving in this direction would be good for families and for the government as well." so we could start evolving from the spend happy Americans to the Americans with money to spend...so to speak. "Curry points out that "30 percent of S&P 500 profits last year were earned by financial firms, and U.S. consumers were spending $800 billion more than they earned every year. As a result, most of our top math Ph.D.s were being pulled into nonproductive financial engineering instead of bio-tech research and fuel technology. " so the people that could get the U.S. out of dept are in nonproductive fields instead of doing things that can get us out of dept such as fuel research.
"It's a fundamental American belief that competition is good—in business, athletics and life. Checks and balances are James Madison's crucial mechanisms, exposing and countering abuse and arrogance and forcing discipline on people. This discipline will be painful for a country that has gotten used to having it all. But it will make us much stronger in the long run. If we can learn the right lessons from this crisis, the United States will once more be playing by its own rules. And that cannot be bad for us."

samuelson:is this a repeat of 1929?

"There are parallels between then and now, but there are also big differences. Now, as then, Americans borrowed heavily before the crisis—in the 1920s, for cars, radios and appliances; in the past decade, for homes or against inflated home values. Now, as then, the crisis caught people by surprise and is global in scope. But unlike then, the federal government is now a huge part of the economy (20 percent vs. 3 percent in 1929) and its spending—for Social Security, defense, roads—provides greater stabilization. Unlike then, government officials have moved quickly, if clumsily, to contain the crisis." says Robert J. Samuelson. The story is saying that we were on the road to another depression of the 1929s. but the fact that the government is now a major part in the economy and its spending for the economy to improve such as things in Social Security, defense, roads and other things that will help the growth of stabilization. "We need to remind ourselves that economic slumps—though wrenching and disillusioning for millions—rarely become national tragedies. Since the late 1940s, the United States has suffered 10 recessions. On average, they've lasted 10 months and involved peak monthly unemployment of 7.6 percent; the worst (those of 1973–75 and 1981–82) both lasted 16 months and had peak unemployment of 9.0 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively. We are almost certainly in a recession now, but joblessness, 6.1 percent in September, would have to rise spectacularly to match post-World War II highs. The stock market tells a similar story. There have been 10 previous bear markets, defined as declines of at least 20 percent in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. The average decline was 31.5 percent; those of 1973–74 and 2000–02 were nearly 50 percent. By contrast, the S&P's low point so far (Friday, Oct. 3) was 30 percent below the peak reached in October 2007." The Great Depression resulted from the mix of a weak economy and government policies that grew the weakness and that were only partially held off by the New Deal. If we can avoid a similar blunder, the great drama of these recent weeks may prove blessedly misleading.