Two Things are Back: A Recession, and This Blog

At this point I'm probably just writing for myself, but I'm back to actually writing! Real quickly, I've spent the last year basically playing - having a great time acting/playing music and making a few bucks while at it. The arts life is fun, challenging to the ego and the pocketbook, and ultimately something that we all need in our life. To what extent it will overtake my life has yet to be determined - but I've been feeling lately that it's a bit of a selfish life and the notion of living only for my own artistic passions hasn't been sitting well. Can't I touch other people's lives a little more with the time I have on this planet?

Okay, with that out of the way, let's move on to today's topic: Double Dip Recession. It's kind of a strange name - as it sounds like we intentionally got ourselves into a recession again just like we would go back for another dip of delicious guacamole! All this term means is that our economy has dipped to recession level again.

How do we know? Several key factors: access to credit is still relatively low; in housing, we have more than 28% of all single family mortgages underwater; uneployment is still very high at 9.2%; inflation is hitting us hard on all levels of spending (even late night McDonald's is costing us more!); oil prices are still well above what we remember just a few years ago; and investments are yeilding less (please don't make me look at my 401k this year).

I can't help but think, however, that this is just the ying and yang of life. We as a country lived in relative opulence for a while - buying big homes with nearly no initial investment, creating a start up and burning through cash like it was going out of style (apparently it was), and enjoying lots of credit cards and mortgages that we really shouldn't have. Now, maybe it's just the universe, or kharma, or the gods of economic equality telling us to get back into shape.

This conversation will inevitably tie into the debt ceiling crisis going on in Washington this week. No matter what side of the aisle you are on, you'll be blaming someone on the hill for getting us into this and/or not being able to get us out. I largely blame the republicans for spending ridiculous amounts of money on two wars, not enforcing oversight in defense contracting, and purposefully allowing the bankers in New York to take a gamble with our economy. I blame the democrats for not looking ahead and making changes while they had both houses of congress and the White House in their control. Is health care reform really more important than economic reform? In hindsight, I would say no.

But the real blame is shared between congress, the white house and us. We as individuals overspent, overborrowed and underplanned. We ignored the fine print in adjustable rate mortgages. We ignored common sense when purchasing homes that were simply bigger than we needed. We lived for today, without thinking of the consequences. It's human nature to do this, and we'll probably do it again and again. Now the economy is correcting itself - and hopefully doing so with the thoughtful guidance of some smart people leading the way in Washington (Insert politician joke here).