The blame game

Somehow, I always expect the world to stop when I'm on holidays. I want to tell people "Hey you. Stop what you're doing now so that I can pick up exactly where I left off when I come back." I think it's to do with feeling disconnected from the world. When the internet, and thus the world, isn't readily at my finger tips, everything better stay the same until I can be well informed again. Do you feel the same?

In a few short weeks, a war has started (although I guess technically it never ended), $50 billion has been lost to a Ponzi scheme, and another $50 billion has been stolen from American taxpayers for the Iraqi reconstruction. As a taxpayer too, I am outraged. Whatever happened to no taxation without representation? Why do I have to pay taxes there when I have no say in who gets to spend my tax dollars? I'd better get a huge refund this year.

But the article that grabbed my attention the most was one linking Chinese savings to the current economic crisis.

The problem, he said, was not that Americans spend too much, but that foreigners save too much.

And who is this "he"? Ben S. Bernanke, no less. The article also goes on to state that

In hindsight, many economists say, the United States should have recognized that borrowing from abroad for consumption and deficit spending at home was not a formula for economic success.

Duh. You think?

The suggested remedy was to push Beijing to revalue their currency, thus cutting the source of this drug of cheap manufactured goods. But of course it is never the average American's fault. The regulators weren't doing their job. It's those greedy people on Wall Street. It's those bloody Chinese who don't have enough confidence to spend and so they invest their savings abroad. It's not my fault even though I faked my income and got a loan I couldn't possibly afford. If the banks were willing to give me the loan, it can't be my fault, can it?

Everyone lost their heads in the enthusiasm of the recent gold rush. Except it's now the next day and we have woken up to find that all the gold has turned to lead. Yes, there are people at fault, but don't kid yourself - the multiple "people" includes ourselves and our own greed.