The latest financial crisis is not my fault.

Consumer confidence is down because the individual American’s debt is skyrocketing, their houses are more expensive than they can afford, and their jobs are disappearing.  Meanwhile, they’ve got big screen TV’s (guilty) and satellite television (guilty), high-priced cars (also guilty), nice computers and iPods (ditto, ditto).

Our financial system isn’t spiritually and literally bankrupt because American’s arent’t spending.  We have been spending like crazy.. the problem is, we didn’t have the money to spend in the first place.

Who’s fault is it?  Our parents because they didn’t give use those financial lessons we desperately needed as children?  Our education system, that should have but fiscal responsibility in there somewhere with reading, writing, and arithmetic?  Our government, because they should have been watching out for our well-being by regulating predatory credit practices?

Answer:  none of the above.  The fault lies with ourselves.  It’s not government’s job to police our pocketbooks (as much as Washington would lead you to believe differently).  It’s not the school’s faults because the cirriculum for such an education doesn’t exist.  It’s not our parents’ faults because they never learned those lessons themselves until much, much, later… at the same time we were learning them.  No, this is a mess we got ourselves into.

What I don’t want to hear from our government right now is how it our responsibility as consumers to go out and spend money to inject the economy to revitalize it.  That is complete bullshit.  I’ve got rent to pay, car payments to make, gas to buy to fuel those cars, and credit cards to pay down.  I’ve got kids to feed, winter clothes to buy, and Christmas to save up for.  I’ve got airplane tickets for Thanksgiving, Halloween candy to buy, and a couple of beers every now and then to wash down the bitter taste of my system of government blowing up in my face because of our collective lifestyle.

So, if you’re going to pretend you are France and purchase stock in the major banks to fix the fact that our dollar system isn’t worth the crappy paper it’s printed on, go ahead.  If you’re going to inject politics into our free market, knock yourself out.  Just don’t ask me to go out and buy another iPod because the economy is in the tank.

There is no more water in my well.