It’s been about eight and a half months since I last used this title “Freedom Isn’t Free” for a posting. A lot has happened since that time. I might go as far as to say we’ve entered a “Brave New World.” Last May when I last used this title my dear friend, colleague and mentor, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones was on his last around the world speaking tour, speaking in a whisper since he’d lost his voice a month before. Charlie has since returned, his advanced stage prostate cancer accelerated rapidly and by October of 2008, Charlie left this world for a place in Heaven where I’m sure he greeted St. Peter and his Savior, Jesus, with one of his trademark bear hugs. Gasoline finally hit an all-time high of $4.00 per gallon in Winchester, VA and higher in other parts of the country – and within just a couple months hit a low of $1.35 per gallon in Winchester. The real estate market has continued to tank to a point where a townhouse in Manassas, VA that sold for $265,000 in 2006 just sold for $60,000 less then three years later. Other places are selling in the $40,000 range in Manassas and Prince William County, VA. It’s worse in other parts of the country. I read an op ed in the New York Times on-line today about people who were buying homes in Detroit from between $100 and $1,900 – one couple even bought one for $500 and sold it within a month for $550 – that’s a 10% profit in just one month.
Our banks have failed us. The greedy Wall Street investment banks have robbed us. The largest insurance company in the world has been given $180,000,000 of taxpayers money (that the treasury doesn’t have). Bernie Madoff is due to plead guilty this week to the largest Ponzi scheme in history (and there are those who believe that larger ones will be uncovered, yet). And, several other smaller Ponzi schemes have been uncovered already. We’ve elected a bright, well educated bi-racial man as the most powerful man in the world, the President of the United States. He came out of nowhere. He has taken the reins of a country in perhaps the most crucial time in its history. The BIG Three (remaining or what was once a much broader field of domestic auto manufacturers) auto manufacturers are fighting for life – two of them, literally, begging around the world for anyone to help bail them out – they’ve already received about $17 billion of taxpayers hard earned money that will quite possibly never make it back to the taxpayers account. Businesses are failing left and right. In just three months more then 2.1 million jobs have been lost. The unemployment rate has increased and continues to increase at a terrible rate. There is very little credit to be had even though Congress has passed bills allocating nearly a trillion dollars (again, that doesn’t exist in the treasury) to prop up the banking system – the banks are hoarding. Bankruptcies are increasing at what may be a record-breaking rate. Congress further passed a ¾ of a trillion dollar stimulus bill loaded with pork and earmarks, even though the new President said he would not allow such pork and earmarks in the bill – and on top of that the largest deficit budget just passed, again, loaded with pork and earmarks. And the plan is to take the money from the wealthy and give it, for all practical intents and purposes to the poor – I’ve even seen it called the Robin Hood budget. The music industry is changing dramatically. The book publishing industry is changing dramatically. Newspapers are going out of business. Shopping malls are beginning to cut back hours to lower operating costs. And on it goes.
All of this has happened in about 8 ½ months. Of course, we won’t even discuss a whole lot of other issues like the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, companies around the world going into crisis, Iceland almost going bankrupt (essentially they are) as a country. It is a most amazing turn of events and, perhaps, the most critical crisis the entire planet has ever faced. There are so many fingers pointing in so many directions it’s hard to keep up with who the next culprit will be. However, there are three basic human traits that have driven all of this – greed, corruption and power mongering. These are not new. They’ve been the basis of the rise and fall of tribes, countries, businesses, and etc. since Adam and Eve, if you will. The only and very significant difference this time is that, due to technological advances that allowed globalization to grow so rapidly, it is difficult to keep the problems contained. It is like virulent cancer. If it is caught early enough, it can often be contained, removed from the rest of the system and defused. If it is caught too late, its growth accelerates out of control eventually consuming more organs and eventually destroying the body. I am neither a doctor nor a world economist, so I don’t suppose to know the answers to this kind of accelerating cancer – but it is said that all humans have pre-cancerous cells in their bodies. In the case of society – I believe these cells are called – greed, corruption and power mongering. So, while we, individually, may not feel we are directly the cause of this crisis our world is in – we each, within us, have the seeds of this route cause and have in some minute way, most likely contributed to all that we are facing today.
Well, this is an overview of 8 ½ months of time – the last 8 ½ months. It’s not a pretty picture and it doesn’t seem to be getting better . . . YET! And a very real question is, will it ever really get better – at least during a majority of the planet’s population’s lifetime? I’ll have more thoughts in my next posting.
Enthusiastically,
Ed
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