On November 21, I rashly promised to opine about how the global economy got so screwed up that it is causing a lot of pain. I’m not smart enough, so I won’t try to analyze and explain. What I can do, perhaps, is to look at things from a more personal level since it is on that level that we must try to weather the storm.

What storm? Me worry?

In case you aren’t feeling the wind and the rain just yet, here is the kind of a storm I am talking about. It is a storm that is making itself felt at many levels. It causes anxiety about the dependability of our sources of income, and this concern unconsciously ripples down to mundane things like making us picky while grocery shopping, causing us to cut back on travel plans, chop the Christmas gift budget. Some of us are getting the queasy feeling that life suddenly isn’t quite as rosy as it seemed last week and not as secure.

Is this just Y2K all over again? Don’t I wish I knew! You won’t find the answer in this little essay, but the financial pain we all feel may well get worse before it gets better.

Having stated the obvious (I’m pretty good at that), what constructively can I add? Here are some points that occur to me:

Either there is a God firmly in control of the world of government and finance, or there is not. If you lean, as I do, on the authority of the Bible on such matters, you can take comfort in the fact that He is definitely the God of presidents-elect and investment bankers as well as of simple folk, far-fetched as that may seem during these turbulent times. Read Romans 13:1-7, swallow hard, and believe.

The alternative is the terrible helpless feeling that comes from concluding that we are just victims of our fate, so quit your bellyaching. My faith just isn’t strong enough to believe that.

However, that gray mass between our ears is there for a purpose, and it still is helpful to look at the evidence and try to draw our own conclusions. It’s probably not oversimplification to conclude that our dwindling finances are the partly the result of the fear and greed of a handful of people we trusted to know better. Download and read The End to see what I mean.

The Great Depression and All That

If you will humor me for a moment, there may be some helpful lessons from the past that I can dredge up. I can just barely claim to have lived through the Great Depression. I was born in 1931, I am told, and since the Depression didn’t really end until the early 1940s, a few of my early memories may provide a clue about what may be ahead for us. (Or not, as the case may be.)

In the early 1940s, we lived on the north edge of Topeka, Kansas, not too far from the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe tracks leading into the Topeka train-yard. Hobos were still riding the rails as the last victims of high unemployment during the Depression, and my brothers and I would now and then find the remains of their campfires in the woods between our house and the tracks. (We never found a real live hobo, to our disappointment.) Do you suppose we might be in for another time of very high unemployment?

My best guess is that such deep unemployment will not be repeated this time around. Hasn’t president-elect Obama just said that he would give consumer spending “a jolt?” Don’t the majority of consumers already work for Uncle Sam? I’m a consumer and I’m quite willing to be jolted into spending like crazy. (no pride, here!)

“Jolt” the money supply is exactly what President Roosevelt did not do after he was elected in 1934, but I hear that we are all Keynesians now, which may mean more of us will avoid layoffs. Or it may mean that the Inflation Monster is being uncaged, thereby increasing and spreading the financial pain.

A more important lesson, I believe, is that the Great Depression, proved that you and I and our neighbors are pretty darned tough when push comes to shove. Maybe, even in these days of hopping a bus to school or driving ourselves to work or depending on the County Market shelves to remain stocked 24/7, we will surprise ourselves with our resilience.

Will our paychecks continue non-stop? Will our Social Security checks always hit our bank accounts on time? We may be finding out soon.

I’m tempted to preach a bit at this point about the wisdom of “saving for a rainy day,” but I don’t dare, because I have never done that. I unaccountably got blessed way beyond reason with the right education and the right set of skills for my times. (Avoiding the draft helped. Choosing a frugal wife also helped. Frugal I am not!)

Relax – I’m about through.

Worldview, is the translation of the German word Weltanschauung, meaning how we look at the world and the culture around us. The original use of the term conveyed relativism, and was later introduced into Christian circles by neo-Calvinists thinkers like Abraham Kuyper, who argued

that Christians cannot counter the spirit of the age in which they live unless they develop an equally comprehensive biblical worldview – an outlook on life that gives rise to distinctive Christian forms of culture – with the important qualification that it is not merely the relativistic belief of a particular culture but is based on the very Word of God, true for all times and places.

A Christian worldview is a long term view that sees our present financial crisis as just another chapter in the human story. This, too, shall pass.

The secular worldview places its trust in people in high places for a quick fix.

More reading…

The Economist has some interesting things to say about personal and business savings in The End of the Affair and All You Need is Cash.

Then, to go along with The End, cited earlier, look at Worst of Times. On how the crisis is redrawing the boundaries between government and markets, read When Fortune Frowned.

Dave, which he is wondering how this will read in 5 years.