COLUMN: Back to Economics 101

By Tobin Barnes
I’ll admit it. I’m not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but the recent haggling over the nation’s economy has me confused.

Granted. We’re all going to hell in a hand basket, right? Who isn’t convinced of that? It’s already starting to feel a little toasty.

Even George Bush has gotten grayer lately. Uh huh, the same guy who thinks the jury’s still out on global warming, despite videos of polar bears desperately paddling to distant chunks of ice.

Yeah, even W thinks we’re in big trouble. No more Alfred E. Neuman likenesses there. Dawn has finally broken.

Then there’s Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary. He’s got that distinct “deer in the headlights” look, too. Every time I see him, his eyes get bigger.

Paulson started out as a juggler, trying to loop pots full of cash into a recovery. Now he’s more like a magician, making those same pots disappear without a trace.

And how about those pathetic CEO’s, humbly lining up before Congressional committees to get their pre-bailout spankings? Perspiration shining on their foreheads, sitting there in sweat-stained Armani’s?

Those upper-level managers couldn’t even plane-pool to the investigations to make it look good.

But they’re willing to take executive bonuses off the table.

Well how generous. Most Americans would say, “Bonus? What’s a bonus?”

Talk about sympathy for the devil.

Now, rather than bonuses, these poor over-rated Titans of Industry will have to live on the bloated salaries and past bonuses and perks they’ve been hogging for years, enough to endow their families well into the next century.

But here’s a good question: Why are they even still around? They not only ran their companies into the ground, they took the national economy down with them.

Give’em the boot. Bring some folks up from down on the cubicle farm. Give those layoff targets a shot instead. Heck, can’t do any worse.

And then there’s those outraged Congressmen and women, acting like this crisis dropped into their laps from some unseen passing buzzard.

Looking like they’d just gotten sucker-punched. Now they’re acting busy searching for the sneaky guys who did it.

Man, I’m telling you, what a cast of characters we’ve got here.

So you can see I’ve got questions. And here’s my biggest one.

From what I understand, wild-eyed, greed-soaked credit run amok evidently got us into this mess.

The result?

People are getting laid off in the tens of thousands. They’re maxed-out on their multiple, twenty-percent-interest credit cards. They’re paying more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.

And the solution, according to leading, talking-head economists?

We’ve got to loosen up those credit markets again. We’ve got to get America spending like drunken oil sheiks again. We’ve got to get those cash registers ringing again.

We’ve got to keep consumers stampeding the doorbuster sales (killing people in their greed). Get them back to being good patriotic American shoppers again.

And what’s wrong with that picture?

Am I the only one who thinks we’ve entered bizarro world? How is it possible that bottomless, unconscious debt for the individual is good for the nation?

There’s just got to be a better way. Like maybe common sense. The lack of which got us here in the first place.