In watching the meltdown of the financial markets and the turmoil it is causing worldwide I see the blame game starting up.  It's the Democrats fault because of the Community Reinvestment Act and the Clinton administration expansion of that ideology in the late 1990's.  No wait, it is the Republicans fault because they dismantled all the regulation that was in place to prevent such problems.  Blah, blah, blah.....

From where I sit the cause is obvious.  The cause is us.  Ultimately we and the society we have created is to be blamed.  We are a culture bent on satisfying our every desire and want.  If our neighbor has something new and sparkling then we must have one.  If our favorite celeb or TV show tells us that we must obtain a certain level of status or possessions then we do everything in our power to achieve it.  We gladly over extend ourselves and squander our finances to "live a better" and to have it better than our parents or grandparents.

Who among us now can recall stories from our parents or grandparents that detailed their standard of living?  Yes, some were dirt poor and struggled to get by.  But really, how many were like that?  Has our definition of poor been redefined over the years?  I still remember to this day the time that my Dad received his first ever credit card offer in the mail, or first in which I was aware.  I believe it was for Mastercard, it was the mid to late 60's so a little fuzzy.  Anyway, I remember he headed off to throw the little plastic card away and I wanted to play with it.  His response was that "these things are bad; they make you spend what you don’t have.  They will be the undoing on this country one day".  Funny as I think about it.  Side note: yes I know the concept of credit cards go back further than that, but it was the mid to late sixties when they started be push wide and far and no longer just for gas or specialty stores.  My Dad was 38 years old before he bought his first house, and he always paid cash for his cars.  Needless to say, we did not have a new car every 3-4 years.

But enough about my Dad.  How are we now?  We buy or lease cars every 2-3 years.  Why buy the largest house in the nicest area with whatever loan we can get (not what we can afford necessarily).  We take expensive trips, flying most of the time, to ever increasingly exotic locations.  We need a whole room, a media room, in our houses with the biggest plasma TV and sound system that we can buy.  Our cars are impressive; our wife's diamond rings are simply astounding.  I could go on and on.  Of course not all of us have these things but we most certainly desire them and we struggle to achieve as many of them as we can.

But all this happens at what expense? Consumer credit at a all time high, amazingly stupid exotic mortgages, personal savings at an all time low or non-existent. People deemed poor exist across the many economic classes now, working glass, middle class even upper middle class poor.  What makes them poor is the mountain of debt they accumulate.

In the end what is needed is a certain amount of humbleness and contentment.  If we as a culture could learn to find satisfaction within out lives, jobs and families then maybe we can help the next generation get off the treadmill that leads to nowhere ultimately robs us of our joy and even our lives.