WHERE HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE?

I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV. Having thus made my disclaimer, I do have a few thoughts to share about the current economic crisis, as it is called.

First, I like it when Letterman says "All the money is gone. My question is, where did it go?" I think that's an excellent question, and I have not yet heard a simple, believable answer except the one in my gut which says "Well, a lot of it must not have been there to begin with." As in: The emperor's clothes didn't suddenly just vanish, he was walking around buck nekkid the whole time.

Since the advent of Reaganomics, we've been increasingly a culture operating on credit. And in the last decade, the best way to make money was not to produce goods or even concrete services, but to play around with imaginary concepts which had to do with credit. That illusion has finally collapsed, and I simply don't believe it is coming back. It looks to me like a lot of other people don't believe it's coming back, either. Banks are not loaning unless the loans are iron-clad, investors want something else to put their money into, and credit-based businesses are increasingly finding other ways to bleed us if they can.

Some commentator on the national news tonight said "People are simply not spending their money." I wondered what fucking universe she lives in. EVERYBODY I know is spending their money, every last cent of it, on groceries, fuel, housing, and maybe health care. There are ballooning numbers of people out there who have spent every cent and now are losing their homes or having to go to food banks to eat. The majority of people in this country -- that majority which is working class, no matter how much they and the politicians pretend they are middle class -- are not sitting on unspent money. What they/we are no longer spending is money we didn't have. Living on credit is coming to an end.

Which means the same amount of money that ever existed is still around, but decisions about how it spent are changing, must change. And its distribution must return to being a collective decision.

Some of us are capable of making decisions about spending that takes into account, primarily, the common good. Some of us are not. Those who are not will not disappear quietly. They are, as we speak, trying to bust unions, shove more worker-hating legislation quietly through the pipeline, and hiding the footprints of their fellow thieves.

There is no recovery from this, because the term "recovery" implies a return to basic principles and function as it was. What we are facing is reinvention. Which, even as I personally face being swept away, is still a hopeful idea to me. It's time, it's more than time, and working people know how to retool. When you believe you EARN your paycheck each week, reorganization and learning how to do things a different way does not threaten exposure and exile: We know we can handle it, we handle everything else, right?

The risk we're facing is revealed by something Einstein said: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

So, stop listening to people who don't make sense, who you think maybe you shouldn't trust, and quit worrying. Especially quit worrying. I know how hard that is to do when things are so bad, believe me, I do. I've gone without a lot of meals in the last month, and there's nothing like hunger to mess with brain chemistry. But worry does not prepare you for reality, it does not foster flexibility or humor. It's a dead end, because it is another name for fear. There are a thousand ways to outwit fear, and by golly, if we have not become experts in those techniques since Bush sashayed into the White House, we're no longer drawing breath.

I'll see you on the soup line, sister. Breathe deep and finger what luck you have. It'll be all right in the end, I do believe.