Sturm und Dollars: thoughts for the New Year - David Loftus

What do I hope for 2011? I’d like to see people—all of us—work on our anger.

There’s been far too much yelling, cheap ridicule, and abuse in recent years—much of it in the media, on the floor of Congress, and on the campaign trail; but I fear such well-publicized misbehavior both reflects and encourages similarly casual disrespect toward others in the schools, on the streets, and in the home.

If we could all take a step back, not just today or this week, but every day, throughout the year, and acknowledge how much we are blessed in this country, no matter who we are; how small so many of the things that obsess us truly are in the great scheme of things; and how little anger helps us to find and build solutions to whatever ails us . . . that would be a great thing. Anger is a terrific motivator, of course; it can get us off our duff and focus our energy wonderfully. But to maintain a steady diet of rage, day in and day out, in a never-ending search for enemies and scapegoats and supposed incompetents, is a waste of time and energy. Because ultimately, we are responsible for our own anger: how often we allow our friends (such as those talk show hosts) as well as our reputed enemies to whip it up, how long we hold onto it, and where we direct it.

Chill, folks. We’re still all in this together. The longer we pretend that’s not the case, that it’s all that fellow’s fault over there, the longer we’ll avoid finding a working solution for everybody— not to mention keep driving up our blood pressure and shortening our own life.

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It’s not clear whether the hope I expressed a year ago for 2010 (see below) was realized to any extent. Certainly, the dash of cold water the economy gave most of the country was a strong corrective to some citizens’ drunken spending habits. But it’s hard to tell at this point whether things have actually improved. On the one hand, AOL’s Money & Finance site, www.dailyfinance.com, reported in early December that in October, credit card debt had fallen $5.6 billion, but consumer debt (due to student loans, auto loans, and personal loans) was up to $2.339 trillion. The Cincinnati Business Courier had equally mixed news on Thursday: total credit card debt has been falling for two years, but defaults have peaked and applications for new credit card accounts (2.8 million in September alone) have also risen.

We’re coming off a week of celebratory stories by retailers who say holiday shoppers beat last year’s dreary receipts by a long shot, despite the blizzard that hit the East Coast last week. Online sales reached almost $31 billion ($1 billion total on Cyber Monday alone!), a 13 percent rise over 2009. Total consumer spending during the holiday retail season, Nov. 5 to Dec. 24, hit $584.3 billion this year.

I have only two questions about that: How many of those purchases were made with plastic whose holders had no current funds with which to repay them? And how much of that money is heading straight to new absentee owners of American businesses in the People’s Republic of China?