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My mother is worried about the price of bread. I'm worried about the price of pizza. Plus, I'm still trying to get my head around the whole Bear Stearns buy-out fiasco. Stay with me -- they're related.
Even for those of us who have a little background in financial services (I did a stint as an attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission), the thought of a major brokerage house going belly-up was unthinkable. Maybe that's what they thought in 1929, too, and we all know how that turned out. But maybe we should have seen this coming in the not-so-sophisticated aspects of our financial lives, like groceries and take-out.
Economic pundits are still debating what we should call this economic crisis we're experiencing. But no matter how much lipstick they try to put on it, I can't shake the queasy feeling I'm getting when my mom reminisced this week about food ration coupons.
While they're not using the lingo of the Great Depression, the blogger buzz is growing about how to manage as the stock market continues to slip, banks foreclose on mortgages and families think twice, or three times, about buying necessities like bread.
Kris at Cheap Healthy Good has taken notice of the same thing my mom has:
Grain prices are up, dairy products have become a luxury, and meat … well, cheap beef is rarer than a J.D. Salinger sighting these days. CNN, MSNBC, and the newspapers are finally picking up on it, too, with more stories about global grocery shortages and ludicrous shipping expenses.
Chief Family Officer Cathy says even the most frugal consumers are feeling the squeeze:
The problem I run into is that I've gotten pretty good at keeping our costs down. There isn't that much more room to cut spending without reducing our lifestyle, which is a change I really don't want to make. So I've been thinking about how I can reduce our spending in new ways.
This is not reassuring.
Katie at Watching the Flowers Grow at least is trying to find a little humor in the situation in a conversation her son had with her husband in a project to learn about the Great Depression:
"Dad, we have to do this project for social studies. Our family has to eat dinner for $4.00. The only food we're allowed to eat that night has to come from that $4.00. I'm thinking hot dogs. Mom thinks lots of rice. And..."
"Well, that's not going to happen."
At this point Fred and I are gasping for breath through laughter. You had to see Hon's face. He kept looking at me as if I would tell him it's not true. Finally he just started laughing himself. That kind of nervous laughter, he was laughing along with us, but it really wasn't funny to him.
"And Dad, you're not allowed to eat anything else."
"Well I'm sure you can eat stuff we already have right. Right? We'll already have food in our house." More looks to me to save him.
"No, Dad you just have to eat from the $4.00."
Eating from just $4.00 is a pretty sobering thought. So if it's walking like a recession and quacking like a recession, what else should we really call it?
As much as I hate to agree with conservative Tony Blankley, he's right in calling for a three-way (no, not THAT kind of three-way) debate among the remaining presidential candidates to let us hear what they have to say about the economy.
Imagine -- instead of worrying about identity politics, name-calling and delegate counting, we could have a real discussion about how to keep us from imploding on ourselves. I'm in -- how about you?
Joanne finds plenty of time to write about other wonky stuff (in a fun way, really!) at her place PunditMom.
Contributing Editor, Politics & News
Also at MOMocrats, http://momocrats.typepad.com
