QuasiMondo

Personally, I think it's an easy trap to blame consumerism on this problem. Yes, we Americans are quite materialistic and buy too much, and pay for it with what we don't have. What's often forgotten is that consumerism is a two way street. Our consumption helps others prosper, and if we aren't consuming, somebody's not prospering. After all, who else is going to buy up their stuff?

Therefore, I think it's good for us to buy stuff. We get their products, they get our money, they use it to buy their own products and give their money to others, and eventually the money does find its way back to us and the financial circle of life continues.

The abundance of credit, however, skewers this harmonious circle. At the heart of a capitalist system is the law of supply and demand. Sellers raise the price of goods based on high demand, low supply, or they lower it based on low demand, high supply.

In the absense of credit, if an item was priced too high, a consumer would simply not purchase it, or save up intil they have the funds to make that purchase. This results in a low demand for an item, and if the demand is low enough, sellers would be forced to reduce the price to a point that it is more attractive to the buyer. With the availability of credit and the attractive lure of buying now, and paying later, a seller does not have to reduce the price of his goods. The financiers who supplied credit to the buyer pay for the item, and the buyer is now under obligation to repay to that financier.

This creates the appearance of a win/win situation for both the buyer and the seller. The buyer has an item that under the terms of finance, can repay the financier in a timely manner, while the seller now has high demand and does not have to reduce the price of his goods to compensate for what was once a low demand for his product. In other words, the availability of easy credit has altered the system to the point that many goods have now been priced too high to be purchased without the availibility of credit.

On the surface, this appears to be a win/win situation for both the buyer and the seller. The buyer gets his product with the freedom to repay the financier in a timely manner, and the seller now has high demand for his products. Products that would not sell without the assistance of a financier.

This brings us to the current state of the financial crisis. Creditors, fearful of lending money to parties who may not be in a position to pay them back, have stopped lending. This takes the freedom of purcase away from the buyers. This takes the ability of sellers to sell their products at high prices. And this is why I cannot agree with the federal government's $700B bailout.

Listening to today's testimony, if all goes well, the injection of cash into the financial markets would spur confidence in financiers to make loans to businesses and consumers and get the wheels of the economy moving. It would also give financiers the ability to put more people into more debt, which is what got us into trouble in the first place.

It's very easy to say that our voracious desire and the greed of lendors got us into this mess. It is a contributing factor, but not the root cause. Credit, and the easy availability of it is the culprit. Prices have gone up, wages have not. The end result is that there are very few items that a consumer can purchase without putting himself into debt. The question shouldn't be "why are you buying that expensive TV?" but "why is this TV so expensive that you have to put yourself in debt to purchase it?" This bailout plan does nothing to address this fundamental issue of havoc unleashed on that basic law of supply and demand by easy credit. Until we understand how the overabundance of credit has destroyed this very basic law of capitalism, this issue will never be resolved.

- Just my miseducated rantings, what do I know, I just have a phd (plain high-school diploma)

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Cameron originally envisioned the Terminator as a small, unremarkable man, giving it the ability to blend in more easily. As a result, his first choice for the part was Lance Henriksen. O. J. Simpson was on the shortlist but Cameron did not think that such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer.

-From the Collector's Edition DVD of The Terminator