As a rule, I stay out of economic policy discussions. I am not an economist. I have my doubts as to how many professed economists actually know anything themselves, because as often as not their predictive powers are about as reliable as entrail-readings, but I tend to assume (for the sake of argument) that they at least know more than I do about the subject.

But I'm not entirely stupid (surprise!). For example, several months back, I suggested to my father that the economy was in dire straits, that we were headed for some seriously choppy waters. I was in many respects late to that pessimistic party, but even then he dismissed the idea (though recently he suggested that we should be "coming out of it" by the time I graduate, suggesting he has since accepted that I was right). I suspect his dismissal was based on the arguments of the conservative press, who all believe (or at least believed) that rising corporate profits counter the warning signs of rising unemployment, weakening purchasing power, and other "proletariat" indicators. A strong economy is strong corporations! A poor citizenry is irrelevant.

The observation that convinced me that stage-President Bush was putting a rosy spin on things, however, was a steep drop in historic home ownership. That nettled my father--he noted that the country was at a particularly high rate of home ownership. When I pointed out that a high rate of indebtedness attached to a huge number of people who "own" their homes in only the loosest sense of the word is not the same as the security that comes with owning one's abode outright and free of encumbrance, he conceded the point. Putting your equity "to work" is a fool's game, so far as I'm concerned. I want my equity "working" to keep a roof over my head, nothing more.

But I digress. Obviously the economy is in bad shape, even the Republicans have to concede that now, though of course they must also concede that, historically, the White House changes hands under such circumstances. What bothers me more, though, is that now everyone is talking about fixing the problem.

Saints and angels preserve us. The federal government has gotten it into its collective bulbous noggin to Do Something^TM again.

I prefaced this entry with a disclaimer that I will emphasize here. I have no earthly clue whether the proposed changes to our country's economic regulatory scheme are a good idea or not. They certainly sound okay to my untrained ears. What bothers me is that even I know the most basic medical maxim for fixing big problems: you have to stabilize the patient before you can operate. The law of unintended consequences suggests that these "fixes" to economic regulation will inevitably create unforeseen problems. In a healthy economy, those problems would likely be absorbed without too much trouble. But radical change in the middle of what might even be an actual recession could just worsen our economic condition.

I realize that the fed does not have a lot of good options right now. This is the problem with the Do Something^TM mentality. You start with a bunch of "pessimists" making dire predictions that no one wants to hear, least of all the ruling party, so you Do Nothing^TM. By the time the problem seeps through the thick public skull of America and its so-called "leaders," the proletariat is chanting "Do Something, Do Something, Do Something Now!" The problem is, the time for carefully and deliberately thinking up a solution that will fix more than it breaks is long passed. That opportunity is gone. So the government has a choice: it can mollify the populous with rapid and potentially shortsighted responses (you think that economic stimulus check isn't coming right back out of your pocket? Because I assure you that it is coming right back out of mine less than a year after I get it!).

Or the government can wait until things have stabilized and institute programs to prevent the problem from happening again. But by that time, the political will is gone and the status quo doesn't look quite so bad in retrospect.

And then there's the challenge presented when you do act preemptively and the potential problem never manifests; who is to say that it would ever have manifested? Then those people who were wise enough to prevent the problem lose political influence for being the smartest people in the room.

And there's the thing, right there. I have been talking about the government and the citizenry like two separate entities, but that's not how things work here in the United States. We the People are the government. And apparently, for whatever reason, we suck at putting our years of plenty up against imminent famine. I don't just mean that economically, either. I'm not an active environmentalist, but it really bothers me that the possibility of human-caused global warming doesn't scare the pants off of us all. I have yet to see conclusive, convincing evidence from either side of the debate, but if the conservative side is right, we're "wasting" money on caution; if the liberal side is right, we're actively bringing about a global extinction event. Can we err on the side of caution a little? And anyone who thinks America can just walk all over the sovereignty of other countries because we don't need friends because we'll be the world's most powerful country forever, kindly brush up on your history.

Sorry, huge tangent, but this is where I start drowning in the enormity of the task. One alternative to a reactionary democracy is an authoritarian regime, but those always seem to get hoist by their own hubris. China is a good example of a country that accomplishes remarkable feats of collective planning, mostly by devaluing the lives and happiness of its poorest citizens. One can hardly deny that they get results! But I can't say I approve of their methods. Maybe that's a selfish outlook.

But I'd like to believe that we are capable of collectively--and without an authoritarian central government--recognizing rising concerns and addressing them before we're in the middle of a crisis or, in the alternative, sucking it up, realizing that we refused to act in time, and accepting that our failure to act means tightening our belts and riding out the crisis until we're in a better condition to make sweeping changes.

That's probably idealistic of me. Or maybe just ill-informed. I'm not a political "scientist" (ha! Sorry, but that combination of words still makes me laugh--where can I get the formula for guaranteed political success, again?) any more that I'm an economist. But there you have it--all you armchair economists and political philosophers, let loose your flaming arrows. Tell me how I've mischaracterized the problem and failed in my analysis. d^_^b