Taking the lead from my president, I'm on the verge of utter despair.Not because I fear for the economy, but because I am becoming more convinced each day that the people trying to right the nation's economic ship have no idea what they're doing or where they're taking us.
The last time I felt this uneasy was in a car mega-dealership in Phoenix.
On a 100 degree-plus day, an army of salesmen in ill-fitting shirts and outdated ties kept up a constant barrage, beseeching me to buy a truck, dealer financing and an extended warranty -- TODAY -- in order to avoid almost certain dire automotive consequences.
I walked out, and lived to drive another day.
Now a president, various congressmen, economists and pundits are telling me that unless we spend an unfathomable amount of our children and grandchildren' s future earnings -- TODAY -- our economy could suffer a catastrophe that rivals the Great Depression.
I don't believe those claims any more than those I heard in the Phoenix showroom. But here's the difference. I don't have the choice to walk away.
The biggest crisis we face today isn't financial. It's intellectual. Before we spend $2 trillion-plus, in the various financial rescue and stimulus packages, surely we can achieve bipartisan consensus on these two basic, common sense questions: How did we get in this mess and what's it going to take to get us out?
Instead, we seem to be throwing money at the wall and hope something sticks. We've got to be smarter than that...
(Rick Martinez, writing in the Raleigh News & Observer. Humorous and persuasive stuff.)
