Posted by
grad_1986 on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 1:36:17 PM
We have come accustomed to instant response in our American society today. Let's face it, we hate to wait for anything. I can still remember waiting in line at college to submit my punch-cards to try my Fortan program on the college computer system. The long wait was actually good in that it forced you to slow down and go over every line of code to make sure it would compile and run correctly. Sometimes you would have to wait 2 or 3 hours to get the results back. I noticed that after they opened the microcomputer lab containing Apple-II computers and we no longer had to wait (you could compile and run your program in seconds), that my level of patience decreased and my programming style went from "cautious, detailed, check every line" to "just try this and see if it works or not".
Today we have the same view with our economy. We are pressured to "act now" rather than "let's slow down and think this all through". We want to fix our problems in a day and get on with living. But that is not how things really work. I grow tired of people looking at Wall-Street as a grand voting group on whether or not we are doing the right thing or not. Too often we have an "American Idol" attitude towards government involvement in the economy. Just as American Idol where contestants perform one night and the next night we get to see the results of the people voting; we look at government changes (stimulus packages, new laws etc.) as some sort of "performance" and the next day we get to see the "results" played out on Wall-Street. Did they like it or did they hate it? If they liked it we think, "Oh I guess Bill-XYZ was good!"
But we need to see that these changes will take months and maybe even years to play out. What will happen when all the stimulus programs (such as bridge and road building) are done and those workers are layed off again. What happens when businesses try to get going again, but all the credit has been swallowed up by Obama and his big spending programs? What will happen when our dollar becomes devalued overseas and we pay MORE for our appetite for imported goods? What will happen when our national debt grows even more as we pay for these loans with 3 year bonds (we used to fund our debt with longer term securities such as 30 year bonds), and the interest rates from other countries goes through the roof to get some of the money they lost back.
We need to urge our government to slow down and let nature take its course. We need to see that every "fix" we try only makes things worse later on. Obama is no smarter than you or me (and the same goes for his henchman, Timothy Geithner) and Wall-Street does not have the final say on what is a good idea or a bad idea. Instead, we ultimately have the final say.