No Maybe, Baby

The economy's going to hell in a row boat. Next week, Citigroup will likely fail or be taken over by the Fed. It might sell pieces part or the whole bird to someone else, but no one else has pockets that deep.

Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are the only possible contenders for a sell-off. But each has already taken its fair share of buying companies on life support. None of them have the will or resources to take on more bad debt.

Some times, enough is enough is always enough.

Thanksgiving's bearing down, and the world is going crazy around me. There is no good financial news to report. Every indicator points to a recession that might out-do the one triggered by the Arab oil embargo of the early 70's.

I know how bad it was back then. I was just a kid, but kids aren't stupid. They know when it's not the right time to ask for new clothes, even though they're growing out of the ones they have. They know that a haircut is a luxury. That if their feet keep growing, they'll have to ask for new shoes, knowing full well that something else will have to not be bought to get those shoes.

Money was tight back then. Daddy was only working 20 or 30 hours a week. “Partials”, they called it. If the hourly people worked fewer hours, no one would have to be let go. That meant he made less money and that we had to make do with less.

Even as the price of everything from gas to groceries soared.

It wasn’t pretty.

And neither is this go-round.

My fear is that things will get worse than they were back then. All the factors are in place to trigger a total economic collapse. Despite a $350 billion cash infusion, credit remains frozen.

Banks don’t trust each other, so they won’t lend to each other. The Fed has said it’s done until after the inauguration.

There is no cash to be had, and the next one at the guillotine is CitiGroup, executed as a pauper. At $3.77 a share, they can’t last long.

I’ll admit that I’m scared and conserving cash where I can. But my cash doesn’t go as far as it used to. Gas prices have dropped ($1.87 around the corner), but the price of nothing else has. And since my company has taken an incredible hit to net assets just 4 months into the fiscal year, I doubt a raise or modest bonus will happen.

We’ll muddle through. I have no doubt of that. We won’t eat out as often (which isn’t that much any way), we won’t buy clothes, we won’t renew magazine subscriptions. Not doing things like we normally do will contribute to the overall decline, but if I can’t pay for it, I ain’t buying it. And I don’t have enough money to throw down any black hole of “maybe”.

Maybe if I spent more, the economy would recover sooner. Maybe it I went out to eat more, waiters might not lose their jobs. Maybe if I bought new clothes, one more clerk wouldn’t be let go.

We’re entering a period of survival of the fittest. And I intend to survive.

No maybe about it.