Published: February 17, 2009 09:40 pm      

GESENHUES: Bailout blues

Numbers are not my thing. I do math about as well as I drive. So me commenting on the logistics of our nation’s economy is a bit like me teaching driver’s ed. Of course, that’s not going to stop me from lamenting on our national numbers (or lack thereof), I just want to say from the start not to expect a Warren Buffet-style commentary.

Here is what I figure: over the last decade, organizations that had money to lend were selling the American dream. People were purchasing homes they couldn’t afford and buying things on credit that they didn’t need. Two-car garages were filled with shiny new cars; homes were filled with new furniture that was financed without interest for years to come. Photo books were stuffed with pictures from vacations all bought on plastic.

Is this what happened? Did the race to the American dream cause this national nightmare? Oh the irony, right?

I can’t imagine that this is what my grandparents had in mind for our generation when they were literally saving pennies to escape the depression. My grandmother does not buy anything on credit. I can’t imagine a world without it.

And now what do we do for our children’s children? I know my trips to Target to fill my red cart with stuff I could live without is not helping; even though, our government’s $700 billion answer says spending is just what we need. From the bailouts back in September to the stimulus plan that was signed last week, the solution is all about spending. But is our government spending different than me not saving? It’s all so confusing to me.

The kicker is that we have to trust people (our President and the US Congress) who don’t know if they know answer but still keep writing checks to companies (AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup) that don’t know how best to spend it. And these companies are a mess. They handle money about as well as I do.

The difference is that they are mismanaging millions and billions of dollars that they didn’t even earn. It’s all bailout money-money that our government is borrowing from my children’s generation in the hopes that there will still be a national economy when daughter’s pre-school class hits the job market. And worse still, these companies that are receiving the bailout billions are money management firms! They are in the business of managing money.

John Thain spent more than a million dollars to renovate his office and continued to hand out million dollar bonuses to employees who had obviously failed when his company, Merrill Lynch, had to merge with Bank of America. And then there was Citigroup who received $45 billion from the bailout and thought maybe they should squeeze in the purchase of a $50 million dollar corporate jet with their new found funds.

All of these spending tactics are a little bit like thinking, “I don’t have enough to pay my mortgage so I’m just going to drop what I do have on a $200 dinner at Jeff Ruby’s.” We don’t have enough to cover the things we need, so we spend what we do have on empty purchases meant to fill a gaping gap that just stays hungry.

Spending money that you do not have only feels good at the moment it happens. Depending on how much you spend (and how much you have), buyer’s remorse can set in as early as the car ride home-or, in the case of these corporate expenditures, on the corporate jet-ride back to the million dollar office.

All of this spending brings me back around to the solution of why spending more to save our collective assets is the answer. Theoretically, it seems like spending is exactly why we are in this place to begin with. I have a picture in my head of everybody running down a steep hill and gaining so much momentum that we are all out of control. But to keep from falling and wiping each other out, we have to keep running as fast as we can until we gain control and are headed in an upward direction.

The scariest part is that we don’t know how steep this hill is. Are we close to the bottom yet? Or do we have a ways to go before we start back up again? And how many are we going to lose on the way down? Sprinting with our eyes closed is a dangerous race. My hope is that we finish on steady ground. And maybe teach our children that this race to the American dream isn’t a race at all, but a way of life that doesn’t include credit cards, unnecessary things, and shopping sprees.