Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Do you really think it will change anything fundamental?

I'm afraid it might.  If this heinous bailout goes through, banking in the US 
essentially becomes a government function, socialist financing.  The road 
back is unlikely to impossible.  

Now, your premise is right.  The people are not going to change.  

In the large company with whom I had a contract for many years 
(GlaxoSmithKline), my immediate supervisor was a fine Scottish fellow.  Here 
in the states 
he could own a modest house with a tiny pool out back, a "full sized" car, 
etc. 
 Back in the UK he could have afforded none of that.  The company was cutting 
back drastically (the facilty eventually closed altogether) and his job was 
in jeopardy.  He and his wife attended one of our 'Hoot in the Holler' 
parties 
about then and when a few good ol' boys had drifted through passing around 
the 
mason jars, his wife loosened up and confessed how worried she was.  If the 
he lost his position abrupty, it was two weeks to abject poverty.  We saw her 
in the mart not long after, sober as a judge (both of us) and she was ashen 
faced and trembling because of the worry.  "If ever we get out from beneath 
this, 
we will pay off our mortgage and ever borrow money again as long as we live!"

At the last minute, he was transfered to a new position in the RTP area of 
NC.  They moved there and immediately went into three times the debt they had 
before. Or as Kayyam's Rubaiyyat says:

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before   I swore---
but was I sober when I swore?   
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand 
My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore.

All that angst forgotten.  Like that I well remember the rush in the 70's for 
smaller cars, less driving, never again will we face the specter of an energy 
shortage.  Not ten years later we were cranking out the SUV's and far flung 
exburbs.

We (collectively) don't learn until we have fouled our own nest beyond repair.

We're doing that with the very nature of the financial makeup of our economy. 
 It is likely to be a one way ticket.   </HTML>