Here we are post-inauguration.
The historic moment passed.
Reality is back in full throttle.
The Dow keeps falling, and the economy is haggard.
With so many jobs hemorrhaging, America needs a transfusion. In his inauguration speech, President Barack Obama asked us to put away childish things and grow up. This is a ridiculous exhortation given that he wants Congress to grant him $825 billion for a second economic stimulus plan. Unless the government is printing money it does not have, which is a childish and irresponsible thing to do, I don’t know where it will find these billions.
The investment bankers on Wall Street, with their cooked accounting, their credit default swaps and their insubstantial mortgage securities; the millions who borrowed money they could not return to buy houses they could ill afford; mavens at the Treasury Department who handed out Troubled Assets Relief Program money willy-nilly; and commercial bankers who used that money for everything except lending are the Americans who need to grow up. But they never will because the government rescues those who toy with the economy as though it were a childish thing.
Paradoxically, Americans who put away their childish things, worked hard, saved money, lived within their means and built a nest egg for retirement are sitting on broken eggshells, some with pink slips in their hands, wondering whether they would have felt better after a greedy and childish romp within the financial bubble before it burst.
What are the childish things President Obama expects us to put away? Certainly not our BlackBerries! He himself wouldn’t put away that one. Are we expected to put away our iPhones and our Xboxes? Mayor Sheila Dixon would find it impossible to comply with that commandment. The American economy and now the world economy rely on childish things being bought with childish glee by people willing to throw away a lot of borrowed or stolen money.
Suppose most Americans moved by President Obama’s inaugural speech lose their youthful bluster and put away their childish things. And then the president’s stimulus checks arrive in the mail. The reformed and responsible souls would buy essentials like groceries and medicines, pay their mortgages, or invest the checks in conservative savings accounts for a pittance in interest, thus giving most of the stimulus package to the banks that are already sitting on the bailout money. How will this help the American economy? We will have more businesses follow in the footsteps of Circuit City and more layoffs.
If President Obama wants Americans to buy electric cars, unconcerned about their cost and safety record, and unperturbed by the capacity of our electrical grid to keep these cars running; if he wants the likes of T. Boone Pickens to build windmills across the land; if he wants us to keep driving over the new highways and byways to be constructed by those he puts to work; if he wants us to use ethanol to fuel our cars, impervious to the hunger this creates in poor countries by diverting crops to alternative energy; and if he wants to prevent the downfall of Wal-Mart, Macy’s, Best Buy and other such companies, then he should change his tune and encourage us never to grow up or put away our childish things.
Usha Nellore is a writer living in Bel Air. Reach her at [email protected].
