Welcome to 2008.

I sat on my couch with my wife Koudoawaia Menatep (Her SL name of course) throughout the duration of the dropping of the great ball at Time's Square watching it on MSNBC and CNBC, yes.. NBC has me cornered as a viewer. While I sat there, enjoying the warmth and coziness of her snuggled to me, I kept thinking about all the magnificent structures in New York, and how much it must have taken to build them.

Someone had to take great risks, expending monumental amounts of resources, to build the icons of that landmark. They gambled a lot on their location and the features of the land. I'm sure not a few were scammed and cheated along the way before our society matured a little more from its pre-Black Friday dreams in the 1920s. I also think about how today I can't help hearing on the news about how sorely my nation (the United States) is burdened with debt. Consumer debt, National debt, mortgage debt. What happened to the good old Wealthy United States? The ones immigrants dreamed about with streets of gold and lady liberty shining in her brightness in the harbors of New York? Are we seeing the corrosion of the American Dream just as her copper was blighted by oxides?

I can't help feel that all this is tied into the failing moral fabric of our society. Traditions abandoned, rebellion against parents and guidance gone unchecked, a general lack of discipline in all mannerisms of life in the pursuit of ultimate freedom, which is supposedly meant to make one... "feel free." Yet to me, debt is a shackle. A shackle snapped on my wrist by a lack of discipline with my wallet.

Businesses are supposed to encourage you to spend your money. Advertisers are supposed to encourage you to spend your money. Predatory lenders love it when you spend. Tax collecting political stooges are supposed to encourage you to spend money for their special pet projects that you don't care about them appending to every pork barreled bill that passes through congress. Economists encourage you to spend money for the economy's sake so their historical record looks like a boom, not a bust. Your parents are supposed to teach you to survive the baiting of all these hawks by saving enough nuts in the tree for any harsh winter that may upon you beset. What happened? I think it's obvious. Rampant divorce rates, inattentiveness of modern parents to their children due to lifestyle and business changes, the continuing strain of the average American under the slaving collars of our corporate masters who have not put the breaks on spending regardless of the fact their customers may soon well be penniless.. and then where would that leave their profit margins? (I think Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and a few other corporate giants are finding out the hard way.)

And with National Debt at an all time high, what happens.. when the economy suddenly runs into the wall of creditworthiness? What happens when there becomes a significant risk the U.S. Treasury Bill may actually fall out of the beautiful AAA status it has set upon so long? Okay, perhaps it won't get that bad, but it sure will likely feel that way with the mint printing money to try to keep up with obligations and inflation soaring to such levels that would make pre-world war 2 Germany look like an economy's safe haven... and all this at a time when fuel prices are hitting record levels.

I've made my New Years resolution my friends. Save.. save a lot. The winter upon is dark and I don't think there'll be many of us able to entirely escape the effects of the coming years.

I hate to be gloomy on the New Year, but when I don't think of the Financial world.. I have a lot towards which to look forward. After all, I have her, and she's worth more than all of Fort Knox. (*Hugs Koudoa softly..*) There's also technology and other sectors which are promising, but what is technology if there's a shortage of financing but an exercise in futility?

To you and yours, a safe, happy, spiritually, and financially sound 2008,
Maelstrom

PS. Getting National Debt down so that way pay less interest and then in the long term can have even lower taxes is a good thing, get your local political stooge to look into it or be very concerned about long term national and global security. A nation that saves and builds great works on the savings, not debt, will outlast one which does everything on the back of future cash flows. (Ask China, they're really good at this. Scares me sometimes; to the point in fact it's how I know the Pentagon has absolutely no say in how the civilian sector really runs save for their personal votes because our spending policy is very strategically unsound.)

PSS. Find a way to do this without the unbelievable bureaucracy and partisanship of the U.S. Government getting in the way in this day and age, and I will put you on a Plateau that surpasses FDR,Ike, and Lincoln, but not George Washington, in your abilities to Govern.