Things Go Up, Things Go Down

I'm so sick of hearing about bailouts and government spending. I really am. Turn on the radio, television, read the Internet blogs. Spend spend spend. I guess the only way to make a country stronger is to print paper and dole it out. Yes, we're going to fiat out way out this financial crisis.

The Chinese are pissed off at us. They don't like the way we run the global financial markets and have every movement in the stock market based off our economy. They want a world currency standard based off the British pound, US Dollar, the Japanese Yen, and the Euro.

The Chinese have lent the United States massive amounts of money by buying up US Treasuries and are pissed that they have lost a ton of it in the financial melt down. So naturally, China wants everyone to bond together.

They are calling for countries to pool their money into an international money fund for reserves. Think of it as an escrow account. To make sure everyone is playing fairly and by the rules you have to pony up to show you are on the up and up and want to play fairly. Every country picks a number out of its butt and types it into a computer. Then presses a button to add their account to the fund. Its just a matter of how much in what ratio to each other is the concern.

Voila! Problem solved. It saves trees too.

But lets extend this a little further. How about each country putting in a few trillion. Then, agree to delve it out to businesses and citizens over the next 5 years. Yes, thats right. Hand each household a few hundred grand and stimulate the economy. Solve problems. Get people off the streets. Create new business. Prop up old ones.

But that would cause inflation, wouldn't it. So before you do that, put government restrictions on prices so they don't get too far away from themselves. Yes, that means that every business has to buy into temporary government price controls on oil, wheat, rice, steel, anything of a commodity within a fixed priced band.

Imagine how wonderful the world would be over the next decade if greed was actually slapped on the wrist every time it grabbed for more.

But greed is only a small part of the bigger problem. Everyone needs to get educated on how to save, invest, and restrain themselves from spending. We need education to get the point across and it needs to start in the classrooms. Teach kids what money is, how to budget, how to save.

Imagine imposing social responsibilities at an early age. Then maybe Financial Crisis 2.0 won't happen by the time baby boomers are long gone.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.