DEFCONOMY 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... ?

As I'm sure many others have been doing lately, I've been paying a lot of attention to the turmoil surrounding the U.S. economy and the president's $700 billion bailout proposal.

I don't usually watch the president when he's on TV because without fail, every time I see the man speak, I always think (even eight years later), "I can't believe this guy is our president." But, I was watching TV last night at when he came on at 9 p.m., I watched because I wanted to see what he was going to say about the disaster that is our economy.

Just when I thought I couldn't feel any worse about our current situation ... hearing that he has little support (even from within his own party) for this plan makes it all that much more depressing. As stated on many websites, in articles and by talking heads lately, Wall Street has had a party for the last decade and now the U. S. taxpayers are going to pay the price to the tune of $700 billion.

Virginia Rep. Tom Davis (no relation) said it best when he was quoted as saying that the president's plan is the worst he's ever seen but there is no other plan.

Wow ... just, wow.

Glenn Beck of CNN Nightly News wrote a piece about the plan and introduces a new phrase that, as things continue to worsen (which they likely will) could become part of the lexicon used by everyone: DEFCONOMY.

And folks, we are rapidly reaching DEFCONOMY 1, which would be the next Great Depression.

Much like DEFCON 1 (Defense Condition 1), which is the highest alert status at which the U.S. armed forces can be set, DEFCONOMY 1, according to Beck, is the step at which this country's economy is standing on the edge of the cliff with one foot in the air.

Never in my life did I ever think I'd see something like this. I remember as a kid growing up the recession of the '80s and the economic downturns of the 1990s, but I never thought I'd see the economy at the verge of collapse. I remember my grandparents talking about living through the Great Depression of the 1930s and how there was almost a fairy tale-like quality to their stories.

But it was real ... very real and here we are again. The U.S. is (supposed to be) the greatest free market economy in the world and when the stock market crashed in 1929, it started the domino effect that led to the world-wide Great Depression. And if you know your history at all, you know how the global economy recovered back then ... World War II. Nothing like a war-based economy to reverse an economic collapse.

Ye gods. Could it really come to that again? I mean, look at what has happened within the past couple of weeks ... the economy tanks and the rest of the world's free markets swoon in response. Not good ... not good.

And I don't even want to know what my 401k looks like right now. A co-worker looked up hers last week and says the value of her 401k is down 27%. Ho-lee crap.

Then I came across this ... we bought our house six years ago for $151,000. There are six houses on the street that were built by the same builder within a few years of each other (circa 1924) and they're virtually identical (Dutch colonial). The house two doors up from us (which is more updated than ours) went on the market a few months ago for ... $150K.

I keep looking at Joey and wondering what kind of world he's going to inherit and I never factored the economic future into that until now. I keep hearing how the baby boomers are going to clean out the Social Security system so that my generation will see nothing of what they contributed. If that's the case, what is Joey's generation going to face?

And not for nothing, but ... picked this up from the Doonesbury website on which is quoted part of the Republican Party platform for 2008:

"We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself."