Just how much is the media to blame for the current financial crisis in the US?

In this day and age of the information superhighway, we receive our news faster than ever before. We learn of developing events as they happen and before any true verification of the facts has taken place. It’s like watching the raw feed from one of our news networks as information changes by the second. Some thrive on this real life drama and at times makes for great entertainment. This type of second by second coverage is detrimental in financial news and the way our market system functions.

All of our news networks have their “contributors” who are, or claim to be, experts in their field. They make their comments and issue their warnings or approvals based on their beliefs of what is right. This morning it was announced that WaMu collapsed and was bought out by JP Morgan Chase. It has been reported that it is the largest banking collapse in history, ever.

I wonder how true this actually is.

I will generalize this because I don’t claim to be any type of financial expert and I haven’t looked at the WaMu numbers (and wouldn’t understand it anyway).

We must make a comparison here. Just how does the current “crisis” stack up to that of the one that threw this country into the Great Depression? Again I say that I am no where even close to being a financial expert. I would like to see how dire our current situation is when a real dollar for dollar comparison is made. We need to look at real value from now and then with comparisons that include inflation, unemployment, population, trade, debt to income ratio and all economic factors which affect the economic balance of our country.

We also need to stop the news networks from being the Grim Reapers of financial reporting. We need to look at who (or whom) is actually loosing great amounts of money here. If you lost a million dollars last week in the market, are you now poor? That is very highly unlikely. Are you a foreign investor that has felt your wallet get a little lighter? Sorry, I don’t really care.

If you have worked or currently work for one of these financial firms that are now in trouble and holding out their hands for a bail out, you are either part of the problem you too are a victim of your firm’s corporate greed. Corporate fiscal policy and budgeting should include planning for the future and not just the short term. Fast money means almost always inevitable financial death. If I took care of my household budget the same way corporations handle theirs, my family would be living in a discarded refrigerator box.

If you received a mortgage that you can’t afford, chance is that it is not entirely your fault. If you misrepresented yourself in doing so, that’s a whole different issue. Mortgage companies were more interested in making instant money than making sure that their investors money was secure. This blame does not only fall on the shoulders of the mortgage companies, but on the big money investors as well. The “make me money and make it fast” mentality is what has brought us to this crisis (or is it really a crisis?).

The old adage that Rome wasn’t built in a day, can certainly be applied to wealth. What ever happened to working hard towards prosperity instead of fast? Fast money is unstable. Slow and steady wins the race.

I don’t know about you but, I for one do not want MY hard earned money to be used to bail out these greedy companies and agencies that haven’t planed for the future. If I have too, so should they. If by letting them crash means that I have to tighten my personal financial belt, so be it. It’s been tightened before and I survived andIll survive again. It wouldn’t bother me one bit if Freddy and Fannie or Lemman and WaMu went down in flames.