Sustainable Wisdom.

Examining all the causes and not just the economic causes for the current economic mess.
Homer-Dixon, Boutwell and Rathjens use financial terms to describe resource consumption. Depleting resources faster than they can be renewed is "the consumption of the resource's 'capital'." Accordingly, a "sustainable economy" is one that "leaves the capital intact and undamaged so that future generations can enjoy undiminished income." - Quoted from 'Writing from A to Z' by Sally Barr Ebest...

"America is an 'omnipotence transference' driven society."- Sajid Khan

Given the current economic crisis the pundits will explore every cause and purpose all kinds of solutions for this mess. I am afraid that only all the economic angles will be discussed and we will continue to neglect some of the major causes that have contributed to this crisis. We are in this economic hole today not just because of the greed of Wall Street. We are in this mess also because many of us Americans have used our rising home equity to gratify our phony trophy self image. Now that the home prices have fallen and we owe more to the bank than our house is worth we don't know what the solutions are. Lets hope that the current 700 billion dollar bail out package is designed to give us home capital spenders/wasters a second chance(Though it looks like just the top guys will get bailed out).

This is a very dark cloud, over our country and over many of us. At both levels we have to examine very closely the silver lining of this dark cloud. The silver lining is to wake up to our current life style and see what behaviors we need to change. Please read some of my other knols including the knol, 'Me'.

The Govt. must reflect on what they are doing that is chipping away at the very 'capital base' of our country. Our leaders must realize that every dollar that is wasted cannot come back. And if billions of dollars are printed they may come back but these dollars will pull down the value of all the dollars that are already in circulation. In effect there will be inflation and as the dollar value goes down the net capital of the nation will also go down.

Also the current mess is not only real it is as much in our heads as well. We tend to think in black and white terms. The actual reality is gray. All is not lost. The mess is only a very tiny % of our overall economy. If this money is used wisely it may even reverse the housing market trend. We need a huge army of volunteers who can go out there and identify each and every house owner who is in trouble and by how much. The Govt. can help these particular individuals by compensating the banks to the same tune as the amount the banks forgo to the mortgage holders.

Also the Govt. can pass a law that makes interest rates as little as possible across the board. All complex mortgage packages that the common people cannot understand must be banned. All the terms must be in very simple language on just one page. No fine, tiny, hard to read clauses.