Very briefly on economics

Back in May, the best show on the radio, This American Life, dedicated an entire episode to the most comprehensive and comprehensible explanation of the Housing Crisis I have heard. The popularity of this episode has spawned a new podcast and blog on NPR--Planet Money. One particular entry, "Who Can I Blame?" is particularly timely as the McCain/Obama show attempts to entertain us with stories about how the other is to blame and how they themselves are not.

Good reading although I don't know if I can go along with the bit about how other countries share the blame for limiting investment. Part of me reads that as "shame on you for being wary of the possibly corrosive affects of the Global Economy and exercising some of the same regulations that may have kept us out of this mess." But I could be wrong.

Thrift

The Return of Thrift

Personally, I don't think thrift is going to make any huge comeback on a large scale. We, as a culture, cut back our overspending for short periods of time but our economy is robust enough nowadays to withstand ebbs and flows so I seriously doubt that we'll have the kind of economic disaster that turned my great-grand parents to thrift. Thrift as a virtue is going to go the way of sexual morality--something old-fashioned that was necessary in the bad old days before sexual equality and the pill.

On a personal, moral level, the stakes are different. We are trying to learn thrift--or relearn it, I was pretty frugal before college--even if it kills us.