A longer rant about another topic that I rarely talk about...but needed to be said.

The stock market has been wildly erratic and dropping. To most of the populous, this really has not meaning unless it starts affecting them directly. What means something to everyone is how much they pay in taxes, how much the bread, milk, toilet paper and gas costs, and how much money they make personally.

With unemployment rising, local and state governments running out of money, and the continued dollar falling, the citizen is beginning to feel the affects. Credit is harder to get. Houses are plentiful. Construction is down. Energy prices are rising.

People are stopping investing in the 401K plans and are sinking it into keeping the status quo, status quo. The holiday season is expected to see huge shortfalls thereby continuing the downward spiral. In a futile effort to regain consumer confidence and restore some political sponsors, the government is going to bail out the banks thereby inserting themselves into capitalism.

Now for my opinion...Stupid idea. The banks are in the banking business, the airlines are in the airplane business and the IT companies are in the IT business. The banks understood the risks and rewards from being a bank and charging exhorbitant fees to their customers for bad checks, annual fees, new checks and so forth. They in return take those fees, and your money and build big beautiful banks, invest in the stock market, and offer credit to people and companies knowing the risks.

This is business. Airlines fly planes knowing they need to make money and keep the planes maintained. IT companies know they need to stay up on technology in order to survive. The government needs to stay out of it. The economy will balance itself out. Bailing out the banks will just help the banks and insurance companies. If the government thinks that injecting money into banks is going to give more credit lines they are in the great delusion, not the great depression.

Ask youself this, if you gave a person or company a loan for $20 and the faulted on the loan, what are the odds that would give them another loan? What about $200,000 or $2,000,000? The bigger the loss the less likely that it will happen again. Banks fail. It has happened many times before and it will happen many times again. The governments solution is just a stop gap that we will feel much more further down the road as our deficit increases 700 billion dollars that we didn't have.

At what point will we pay the now 10 trillion dollars back? Where could the 700 billion be used better? During the great depression, I believe it was used on infrastructure, thereby creating jobs (construction specifically), increasing spending and increasing consumer confidence. How about creating domestic product? If you have ever looked at the back of anything you purchased, odds are 85% of everything you buy is made somewhere besides the USA.

The argument is that we already have an infrastructure in place. Yes...and No. Yes, a road infrastructure is in place thanks to the great depression, however, as many people of Minnesota can tell you, it needs repair. There is more to infrastructure than roads. Energy is now an infrastructure product. With the oil problems, maybe we should be focused on lowering energy cost, increasing renewable resources and building around a new energy infrastructure. There is good news with the 700 billion, 18 billion was earmarked for renewable energy tax credits...guess someone got that part.

There are still areas of the country that do not have a safe water supply, the government could be subsidizing those local and state governments to repair those water supplies. Provide advanced educational opportunities (another blog entry), spur local manufacturing, and create soy toilet paper.

As far as the stock market...people know the risks involved when they invest. The fact that some CEOs are having $500,000 bailout congratulatory parties after being help by YOU, the taxpaper, is beyond my understanding.

As far as what you can do about it...nothing. This will just add to the deficit, the companies are likely to close or be sold anyhow (since AIG is now asking for more government money), and the economy will continue to correct itself. Right, you read that correctly. This is a correction. As a nation, we overspent, we created a deficit, and we spent money we don't have.

At the bottom of this, I fully expect the tax rate to be higher, the deficit clock to slow or stop, people to spend money they actually have in savings, USA logos proudly displayed on products, and consumer confidence to rise again. The problem is, the economy (in my opinion) needs to continue falling. It has happened before, it will happen again.

Even though the song read "Our house is a very, very, very fine house", our house is rapidly shrinking. If you have read any previous blog entries, you may know that my 20 year old daughter joined us here in Virginia after being away from us for 3 weeks.

Since then, we have been joined by the 18 year old waiting to enter the Navy. Our last house was 2600 square feet not counting the full basement. We now live in 1400 square feet total. When we moved here, we figured this was more than enough room for me, the Queen and the 5 year old. We even have swing space for a child to come visit.

Soon, the last of the "out of the house" children will be arriving here to stay with us until she and her boyfriend move into their own place. In the meantime, we are going to move into a slightly larger but better carved up townhouse in the community. It has a garage included. Soon after moving, the eldest will be moving out on her own again. The 18 year old is here until March. Needless to say, there will be a constant stream of adult children ebbing and flowing in the house.

But the 5 year old is the catalyst of this entry. Why and HOW is it the 5 year old can have the verbal acumen of some 20 somethings I know? Why is it she wants to have long winded conversations about everything from astrophysics to how the lint gets in her belly button? It is not really the fact that these conversations take place, but the fact they have to take place while I am in the middle of another conversation...

Is it illegal to duct tape a child? to a chair? Because is it not only the talking but the dancing. She will break out in some sort of kung fu ballet right in the middle of the library saying "look at me dance Daddy!"

Where do they get the energy? I am going to guess sleep. Since having very little myself lately, I find that the bags below my eyes have become more like a suitcase...and my general conversations become more like a rambling. You can probably tell. I personally think it is my defense to my daughter's long winded rambling. I need sleep.