godthoughts.net

Back from Israel.  Some pics and thoughts coming in the next couple of days if I survive jet lag…13 hour trip back…no sleep on the plane!

Well, to be specific, not Anywhere near Gaza!  I am going to the Holy Land for about 9 days and won’t be lugging the laptop with me, so a short hiatus, but when I return, hopefully some great pics from Israel and observations!

Our entire society has discovered, in the wake of the market crash/recession/economic downturn/Wall Street greed grab, that our security(financial and otherwise) has been resting on a very thin line of leveraged debt, predicated on greed.

A couple of statistics.  The average retirement account balance dropped 32% from its peak in 2007.  That’s a lot of money never to be recaptured.   The Center for Wealth and Philanthropy estimated in 1998 that there would be a $41 TRILLION transfer of wealth from the Greatest Generation to the Boomers and others.  That’s all pretty much gone up in smoke with this downturn.  Whole lifestyles and plans are upside down as a result.  Churches that planned on that money when they made their building plans are in a world of hurt, for example.

Now everyone is affected.  Even if you had your money in the most conservative investment, it was tied to the market.  If you had money in a bank, you were affected, as the whole system was intricately interconnected.  Whether in newspapers, magazines, or television news, people are making statements of despair as to what they are going to do.

The ones I comment on in this post are Not those who are seriously in dire straits and may very well end up homeless.  No, the folks I comment on are those who are saying they are panicking because they may have to send their precious children to (gasp!) public school, instead of private.  Their high school seniors may actually have to give up their graduation trip to Europe and go to community college for a year.  Their family doesn’t know what to do because they are unable to sell their Second home at the beach/Hamptons/mountains/ski town.  Their vacations can no longer be 5-figure affairs, so instead they may just stay closer to home and only spend $8-9 thousand.  They worry about not getting to eat out every night and having to (omg!) eat in at home.

That’s one part of my gripe.

The other is how can anyone think it is actually okay, or appropriate, or even honest, to ask for, desire, or gripe about not getting, a multi-million dollar bonus in the wake of your company getting bailed out?  How could these bank and Wall Street executives really accept and take such bonuses?  Bonuses which are supposed to be for rewarding great work, for keeping “talented employees”? 

If you’re company tanked and you were in charge, you didn’t do great work!  And if you think you will leave and go to another company if your current one doesn’t pay you a few million as a bonus, go for it!  Where are you going to go?  No one has any money!  Go for it, because you’re not that talented if you can’t even keep your company out of bankruptcy.

That’s the other part of this gripe.

Time and time again the upper levels of compensation range leaders seemingly think it is appropriate to accept such huge amounts of money, even when their companies didn’t really do that well.  This mentality has filtered down to the rest of society.

We all tend to have a mentality that “I’ve got to get mine while I can, because I deserve it, need it, want it.”  We see this in families that bought more house than they could afford so they could live in the “right” neighborhood and that way everyone would ooh and aah that they lived “There!”  We see this now in the many stories of people who lived on credit and debt financing and buying what they wanted in the hopes that the money would keep on coming and those home equity loans wouldn’t be a problem.

The despair across this country seems to be because we all put our trust, to some degree or another, in The Market.  We trusted Mammon and its power and we are seeing the consequences of thinking money will always be there when we need it.  It isn’t. And it won’t be.

Perhaps some may recognize this and begin to put their trust in God more than they used to.  Perhaps this will help lessen the greed in our society.  Maybe.

For the last several weeks, it has been rainy, or gray, or overcast, or cold, or a mixture of all three.  Generally, it has been blah weather.  A couple of days ago, the sun was out and my children were out of school early for teacher conferences.  I sat outside reading my Entertainment Weekly and watched as they played with one another (peacefully!) in the glorious sunshine.  They tried to plant a piece of carpet tube, they skateboarded, jumped off the edge of the driveway, “harvested” food for their pretend animals and generally had a marvelous time.

As I sat there, thankfully warmed by the 63 degree day, I was struck that I could have been missing this moment of bliss.  What if my fantasies about speaking to hundreds or thousands of people all over the nation were true?  I’d be gone and miss moments like this.  There’s not enough money to compare to what I felt and experienced listening and watching them be children.  What a delightful gift I was given.