Most importantly, the sun is shining brightly–it can do no less at 7,000 feet–and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. I should probably stop right there, but that wouldn’t be “me”… [ahem]
Apropos of very little, I’ve been studying economics in my leisure (?) time, following the adventures of world finance as closely as any dilettante can manage. The big buzz-phrase right now is “sovereign default,” as in the possible case of Greece and others, including the land of the formerly free. For a long time, none of this made sense to me. After all, what does it actually portend for mere mortals if such a thing came to pass?
Here’s my admittedly shallow understanding: it’s like a country becoming a deadbeat. We’d declare that we can’t pay our bills–wouldn’t honor our debts–and America wouldn’t be able to borrow. There’d still be a country, but the government could only spend an amount equal to what it takes in through taxation. (Quite the radical shift.) In other words, all federal spending would be slashed: Social Security, Medicare, defense, education, government payrolls, salaries, you name it. This would plunge us into a long depression, and I suspect the price of almost everything would plummet. Good news if you still have cash, bad news if you need to sell assets or have debts contracted at pre-depression levels.
Hmm. Ugh. And hmm again.
More than anything else, this reminds me of what happened to us when we moved to Taos in ’99 and our income dropped by 80 percent. You read that right, 80 percent! The result of several factors, the dot-com bust being one of them. We survived by selling our old house in Maryland for peanuts, burning up all our savings, and going into debt. It was pure unadulterated hell.
The thing is, though, we DID this already, and I don’t intend to go through that again. It’s something like during the war in Vietnam, when it was all I could do to stay out of the Army: after growing up as an Air Force brat living on military bases for most of my life, I felt I’d already served and didn’t need to repeat myself! As a country, as a people, as a species living on the planet Earth, we’ve all done everything already. There’s no more excuse for lying, cheating, earth-raping lunacy, pitting one against the other, trying to “get yours” first.
So to hell with all of that. I think I’ve studied enough of the dismal science now and will just keep moving on. Reading about high finance is like following politics and just as relevant to the phases of the moon or the progression of a single life. BAH and HUMBUG, POOP and SQUADDLE. I may be a guilt-ridden bastard, but so what? Love is all that matters. That’s my Valentine’s Day message to the world, no less valid for lack of originality.
This morning my wife gave me a valentine that said a lot of things that aren’t your business but were very special, ending with, “It’s not even hard to love you. Don’t forget!” And that made me cry. Her cards always make me cry. As for our lives, she said afterwards to put happiness “at the top of the tree…”
I live with a stone-cold genius goddess from another dimension. I am slain, scattered, like dust on the wind.
Go forth and build a new world. You certainly deserve it.
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