More Depression Era Lifestyle Coming into Popularity

I thought this was an interesting article (from the Associated Press), about the state of the American economy.


Here's one of the comments I thought was intriguing ...

Today's consumers might even start to rival their penny-pinching, Depression-era grandparents.

I'm guessing we're not even remotely close to the levels of our frugal Grandparents - yet. I still see a tremendous amount of fairly new, fairly LARGE vehicles on the road. There's still a whole lot of shopping goin' on ... and it definitely isn't just grocery store shopping, either.


The concluding statement:

"I think we're going to have a set of consumers who are moving in that direction (being very conservative in their spending and aggressive in savings -- my revision) because they don't have that much faith in their assets."

While I think that comment carries an intriguing idea with it ... I don't think consumers today have any idea what it really means to be truly conservative in spending, and aggressive in savings. I've hardly ever seen it in my lifetime. I guessing most of us haven't seen what that really looks like. Or there wouldn't be nearly as many credit problems as we are seeing now.


In my honest opinion, the banks (and the consumers who use up all that credit) are HUGELY to blame for the current financial meltdown that's happening. Unfortunately, the banks don't really have to have the physical money in order to dish out the credit (it's just a paper transaction to them) - so it's the consumer who ends up paying all of it in the end.


Al