Titanic, the US economy & rescue boats; what do they have in common? Much! Do you remember seeing the pictures of the Titanic ship as she prepared for her maiden voyage? It was large, it was the ultimate in luxury and it was celebrated as “unsinkable”. The US economy has sort of lived in luxury even if it has been on “borrowed/credit” monies. I think many thought the structure of the US economy was unsinkable as well. We now know differently because of the financial crisis that many have been working so hard to “rescue”. It is common sense, if you live outside of your means to pay for it…you will loose it all.
While i think we will probably be saved from the fate of most of the passengers and crew of the Titanic; there are some who will definately suffer. This morning on the news programs it was announced that the biparisan effort to “fix” the economy has reached a tenative agreement on the way to do that.
What we need to do is wait to see the methods that are employed in this fix- it solution. Waiting feels a bit wrong because things are so very important and desperate for many Americans. There has been suffering already. Some of the suffers have already been in extreme situations…loosing their homes, filing bankruptsy, working more than one job trying to make ends meet; some have been successful in changing their financial direction and some were not. Hearing that taxpayers are going to have to fix this problem with more taxes when they are already pushed against the wall is terrifying. So, some quick explanations of this “bailout” is very important to calming the fears of the public.
It is going to be crucial to learn lessons from the Titanic experience. Even now, knowing that it sunk, knowing that lives were lost…do you think that if the passengers and crew on that ship had each had a bucket and a will to survive that they would not have made the trip up and down the stairs to make an attempt, several times over, to try to bail out the water in the bowels of that ship? Of course they would have.
Had that ship had more lifeboats (rescue boats in our case) would more lives have been saved? Certainly. So, What does the Titanic ship and the US economy have in common…they both needed rescuing, they both carried movers and shakers, people had a vested interest in saving them both, lives were and are at stake in both situations. Can the US economy survive when the Titanic ship did not? It is possible!
Let’s pray that the bi-partisan plan has figured in enough rescue boats to save not ONLY the large banking systems, the mortgage companies, the credit card organizations; but, the people at the base of each of those situations…the taxpayers…the recipients of those services. The little people who are drowning in the flood as we speak need their own rescue ships; or, the overall plan will fail. The future impact of this bailout is not only important to the US but to the global economy as well.
We must not forget that any of those businesses cannot possibly make a comeback if the little people can NOT afford to make use of those services…and, they can’t do that if they are loosing their jobs, their homes, their families to the high cost of living! We all want and need to survive…the will to survive is there; if there are enough rescue ships in this plan, we may just be able to keep the ship of the US economy floating long enough to make it healthy again. We all may be traveling at a lower level than luxury or first class…but, that is alright…at least we will have the chance to recover. We just have to adjust how we think and make choices in our day to day lives that are within our means to pay for them…what a novel idea!
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