NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING; The Universal Bankruptcy

The Latin axiom: "Ex Nilhilo Nihil Fit" applies to our current crisis. I'll explain:

CONSUMPTION: All my contacts and friends linked to the financial community agree; we are in for a long cleanup after the meal, because the meal has been a fifty year gorging on credit unlike any period known in human history.

THE MEAL: It's been a long and enjoyable ride since the post WWII families showed us the way of the future; the prosperity and suburban middle class homes, new cars, backyard swimming pools, and entitlements to a higher level of living never enjoyed by the "average American."

I'm not knocking it. My memories of the blue-collar neighborhood I grew up in are wonderful. People worked hard. Few had credit cards in those days; the 1950's and 1960's. They remembered the effects of the Great Depression, debt, and vowed to "own things" when they bought them. All of us worked, mowed lawns, got paper routes, did something to train us in the American work ethic; that "nothing comes from nothing."

Where I'm going, you already are: Wally and the "Beave" demonstrated to the world the ideal American life with June and Ward Cleaver offering us a window into a family world where values counted. No one forgot values, even though the families in Father Knows Best, Dennis the Menace, Leave it to Beaver, The Nelsons, seemed to have it pretty good.

VALUES in a nutshell: Morality was the rule that guided having something of value. If you could afford it, and you could own it (no encumbrances) then you deserved it. It would have been thought immoral (social responsible sort of way) to offer the "Beave" a credit card at 17 or 18 years old when he graduated from High School. It would have been, socially speaking, "bankrupt" for banks to offer strings of credit cards to just about anyone who asked, because the "ability to pay" for things you can't "own" outright was still fresh in the minds of the American, and indeed the world psyche.

"Value" is defined as something of worth and implies clear possession; clear ownership and "title."

EN-TITLE-MENT: Splurging on the desert of credit card consuming, Americans have mortgaged everything. Few "own" anything they use. Even groceries are often purchased on "credit." And the government, banks, stores, and industry have encouraged "ownership" - having possession of "value" - without traditional definitions being applied. "Debt" and "Credit Scores" became our God in whom we trusted. ALL Americans, we have been sold, deserved more "stuff." "Entitled" mentality took fifty years to become "normal," yet having clear "title" always meant REAL VALUE to prior generations. We became a people drunken with "entitlement" to "have" and "get" and strangely believing we "owned" stuff without owning it.

FIFTY YEARS: I've lived long enough to know the difference between "Father Knows Best" values and "government will provide" entitlement values. We are bankrupt as a society, wanting, and crying, and whining that we never have "enough." That we don't have "what the other guy has" therefore it isn't "fair."

I could go on...but you have seen the movie, because you are part of it. My wife and I own very little. We do not live in it, drive it, eat it, wear it, or show it off unless we "paid" for it.

"Goodnight" to desert. Hello basic values of hard work, true value, and real ownership. It will be a tough road ahead as credit card living, and bankruptcy is the next "default" wave to hit the economic shores. But then "Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit, applies: Truely "nothing comes from nothing."

James Michael Pratt
www.jmpratt.com