I have now seen at least a dozen television commercials and psuedo-short-documentaries and news blurbs about "how we got into this financial mess" and "what exactly is a credit crunch?"  I find it to be rude, disdainful, patronizing and insulting that somehow, we (the American public) are deemed too ignorant to understand what has brought us, collectively, to the edge of financial ruin.  Some of these pieces of "information" are delivered in cartoon format, no less, which gives me the eery feeling of being four years old and watching School House Rock, learning how a Bill becomes Law.  Is anyone else experiencing that creepy deja vu?

So by now, we have all heard how the entire global financial crisis was caused by vast quantities of "faulty" mortgages, which are somehow never the responsibility of the banks who issued the credit in the first place, which has caused said banks to suddenly become cautious and withhold loans, which stagnates the greater economy by limiting the amount employers, businesses, and investors can spend...  All of which leaves the money traveling at a trickle and this is what is supposed to be causing the "economic downturn", which any darn fool with any skill at etymology can read as a "financial depression"!

However...

Unless everyone has been living under a rock, we can easily follow the "paper trail" of monies ill-spent, ill-invested, divested, created and dispersed.  Lest we forget that global markets are suffering and that much of our foreign investments are in 1) small countries with massive debt to the World Bank and other mighty economic bullies, the investments not having been for the growth of those local economies but for the benefit of large American corporations sourcing cheap production of goods; 2) the War (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, et al); 3) attempting to find a return on the imaginary power of the American dollar, which rests on a foundation of aether, not upon the reassurance of gold or silver like most international currencies; 4) oil production and refining; and 5) buying the favor of foreign governments via commercial enterprises and political coercion, so that they will (hopefully) in return invest in America by buying all of our debt...  All of this has devalued not only our U.S. currency, which impacts our own national economy, but has devalued the currency of many other nations who have been persuaded to yoke themselves to our capital ventures.  The Big Picture of how we have come racing to the brink, like so many lemmings, has more to do with this global co-dependence and much less to do with a swath of home-owners defaulting on their mortgages.  The fundamental premise of a world-wide economy was flawed from the beginning and it was destined to fail; what with rampant, un-checked capitalism as its impetus.

At home, we have robbed ourselves of our own stability by privatizing government agencies and their services.  Just like rent control legislation tends to create the very situation it tries to avoid - by driving away investors and landlords who might otherwise create and sustain affordable housing, voluntarily - removing the funding from programs like Social Security, Medicade/Medicare, Veterans Benefits and Federal Education Loans has only had the effect of dropping the bottom out of consumer confidence.  We should not forget that "consumer" means not only Joe and Jane on "Main Street", but also businesses who then have to wrestle with the issues of their ability to offer health insurance, retirement packages, educational support and/or viable liveable wages to employees who are struggling to "make do" with increasingly "worth-less" paychecks.  "Consumer" also means schools and daycares that must provide adequate, safe, reliable education and care for parents and their children in the face of increasing disparity between what it costs to provide their services and what money they receive from the State, or from parents directly, for providing those services.  "Consumer confidence" is in rapid decline all across the spectrum of our society.  The ripples of that financial panic spread far and wide...

We cannot merely point to the Housing Crisis as the one source of our woe. To do so is condescending, and ignorant, and will certainly not help us as we enter a time of potentially vast ideological reconstruction, manifested as the sudden and sharp birthpain of Poverty.  This Poverty is not necessarily the lack of money, food, or necessary goods.  Our lack has more to do with our world-view than what we need and cannot obtain.  We have a poverty of values.  We can rise up and defeat the looming global despair, but only if we embrace the real Wealth and discard the illusion of affluence that we have fought wars to preserve.  Our true collective Wealth is our ability to learn the lessons of inter-dependence.  We must learn to communally consider the needs of all people, on a planetary scale, and make the decisions about how those needs are met, as one people.  No longer can an America, or a China or a United Kingdom run the show.  No longer can we decide that private interests are more important than the greater good shared by all.  Domestically and internationally, we must find it in ourselves to recognize that our resources are finite and must be invested in and used prudently, wisely, cooperatively.

This is at the core of the lesson.  To speak of our shared fate in the simplest possible terms, as our government leaders and our media have done, with the mood of isolating one easy scapegoat on the social landscape is the height of irresponsibility and arrogance.  I for one resent being approached this way and I am speaking up loud against the tide of insufferable societal conceit! 

To the President, to Congress, to the Media:  Take your "Schoolhouse Rock" explanation of the mess we are in - and don't patronize us!  We are smarter than you think.  We will understand and will become one loud voice telling you about how you have led us to the edge of reason.  We have the power to change where we go from here, if we can find the strength to claim it.

So let us claim it, and stop being children of Ignorance.  Make it known that you know the truth!  Use that knowledge and make it clear that we will not stand for "business as usual" any longer.  The buck truly stops here, with us, the "end user" of the economy.  Make sure everyone else in the water feels the ripple of your noncompliance with economic terrorism.  How can YOU stop the flow, rechannel it, re-define it?  We can over-ride the curriculum of Economics 101, as it has been written thus far...    Make a stand and let the world know that the textbook on the economy and humanity is being re-written.