This financial mess...

I received my statement from Ameriprise yesterday. It looks like the one account I have with them lost over $4000 so far this year. It's what happens when you're still a younger worker and have a higher risk portfolio based on extra time to recoup losses and although I know this in my brain I still have a hard time looking at that piece of paper.

I had a hard time watching the debate yesterday as well. It seemed like it was about two millionaires talking about how much they cared for me in the hope that I'd give them the vote they need to have me pay for their food, utilities, medical care, and an airplane for the next four years. I wasn't impressed.

Both candidates spoke about spending more money and neither really addressed the entitlement mentality that has gripped this country. Whether its folks on Wall Street playing games with the market to use ours to get theirs or folks on Main Street looking for the Feds to do something like that for them the mentality is the same. I want mine but I don't want to work for it, save for it, be honest for it, or think about others in my plans to get it.

Here's something I would have liked to have heard from either of the candidates but i won't hold my breath. "My fellow Americans. Times are tough and the first thing I plan to do after taking office is refuse my salary as President. I'm already wealthy and can afford to live with my room and board at the White House. In addition I plan to ask Congress to take a pay cut and cut staff and privileges until this crisis is over..." Then I'd like to hear something about the Federal government getting out of the mortgage business, the earmark business, the arts business, anything that's not specifically assigned to it in the Constitution. Finally I'd like to hear about how the financial services industries will be monitored to ensure that the hard lessons we learned from the Depression of the 30's and crashes of recent decades won't be repeated.

Last of all I would like to hear this from either candidate. "I have come to understand that at the core of our financial problems is a matter of attitude. We've lived as Americans with the idea that we are entitled to ever increasing levels of wealth and financial success, that we can expect prosperity without thrift, pay without work, and reward at the expense of others. Tonight this ends. Nothing we do as a government will matter if you and I do not fundamentally change our attitude about what we consider to be our birthright, the entitlement to ever increasing wealth. We learning some hard lessons in these days about the costs of living as if tomorrow and our neighbors don't matter and nothing will change until we personally change."

I'm not holding my breath...