What’s Receding?
Being of the not business-minded type, I have tried, mostly in vain, to follow the current economic events, including:
1) The international collapse of the economy
2) The national bailout
3) The budget crisis of California
4) The job market
5) “the economy”
all of which fall under the category, “things affected by / caused by / responsible for” the recession.
The word “recession” is in itself ambiguous. What, exactly, is receding? The hairlines of Wall Street brokers? If it’s the growth of businesses, then shouldn’t it more aptly be named “the stagnation?”
From another perspective, is an economic recession a universally bad thing? From what I’ve learned, the whole mess started because banks gave loans out at high interest rates to people who could not pay them back. Once they defaulted on the loans, the banks got into huge trouble for doing something they shouldn’t have done in the first place. Is the world suffering the consequences of the bad choices made by US banks?
California’s budget crisis also seems unreal. What happens when we have no more money left?
The job market is a particularly jarring aspect of the economic downfall. My job is only secure through April – and what then? I’ve struggled to lay this aspect of my life down, and trust my employment to Jesus. He will provide.
receding – I think of the world as a big pool of money. In fact, at any given moment you could conceivably sum all the monies in the world and the “pool” would be $X full. With the markets plummeting, homes depreciating, and even bonds slowing growth, the net sum of all the monies goes down in the “pool”. Compared to six months ago there’s simply less cash in the world. Period. That’s kind of how I think about “recession”.
Is an economic recession a universally bad thing? Yes. Remember that it is not money itself which is Evil. (Indeed it’s hard to conceive of how some green cloth is Evil.) And less money doesn’t mean less problems. But rather the love of money which as 1 Timothy 6:10 states “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of Evil…”
Lastly, regarding the banks there are two viewpoints. One viewpoint holds that banks gave out unfair mortgages to people who could not afford them. Another viewpoint holds that certain laws actually forced banks to give mortgages to lower income people. The only way the banks could do this and justify it financially is if they included clauses which would allow them to foreclose on homes or raise the interest rate. Now it all becomes label oriented and liberals start calling the banks predatory because a majority of foreclosed homes include minorities. In turn, conservatives blame the U.S. government for passing legislation which forced banks to offer some kind of mortgage to lower income families and so screwed up the freedom surrounding economics in America.
Well,
banks falter;
the stock market plunges;
people lose their investments (vacation/trip money);
less people fly places.
Hopefully, our use of oil is receding.
Hopefully.