Moving Day -- PLEASE NOTE!
13 years ago
A Recession is Just An Agreement
Monday, December 1, 2008
Yes. I said it. It's just an agreement -- and agreement based, for most people, on simple fear (for others, perhaps, an agreement based on simple greed).
If you don't already know about my thoughts on the subject of "money", you may want to read here -- if you don't read that, and you want to go all spluttery on me in comments as if I haven't already made my views about money perfectly clear, I'll probably just refer you back to that post anyway, so you may as well read it now.
OK. Back?
On with my subject matter.
Recession is an agreement -- if this is not abundantly clear to you already (given that the "Recession" is "declared" by "the powers that be", even though many people have been feeling the pinch of said Recession for months) -- then I invite you to consider the following:
No actual money which existed on this planet prior to the great financial crisis of Autumn 2008 has suddenly disappeared -- no money magically slipped out of Earth's atmosphere into deep space -- no money was dumped in a hole, doused with gasoline, and destroyed -- no money was accidentally, or purposefully, atomized in a freak nuclear reaction.
All the money that existed before the subprime mortgage crisis was triggered in 2007, and all the money that existed before the Bear Stearns takeover in March '08, and all the money that existed before the Feds took over Fannie and Freddie, and all the money that existed before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and Wamu, and the Bailout (aka Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 -- doesn't that sound nice?) -- all of that money still actually exists.
(That is, as much as it ever did actually exist -- because it has only existed because we agree that it exists -- please see that post that I referred to above).
On a more tangible scale, the physical resources, objects, and raw materials that all of that money represents or stands-in-for actually do still exist, for certain and for sure, regardless of any human agreements about money -- the Recession has not blown great wads of the planet into nothingness. All the stuff that we have used money to represent or purchase is still here.
That means that the only thing that has really changed on planet Earth since the Recession was declared today (or since it supposedly began months ago) is this: Our agreements about money have changed -- what it is, what it's worth, and how much we will circulate it.
That's it. That's the only difference, in "financial" terms, between yesterday and today, or 2006 and 2008.
All that money that used to be flying around so freely is still somewhere. It may not be at my house, or your house, right now -- but it's somewhere.
Regardless of where you may fall on the financial spectrum -- if you use money in any way, you participate, whether consciously or unconsciously, in this vast agreement -- that's why I can't exempt myself from the Recession concept, or pretend like it "just happened" -- I was playing with the monopoly money with the same earnestness as the fat-cats on Wall Street -- equally convinced that the game was real -- the only difference is the scale and the numbers.
So, I'm going to change my agreement tonight -- I hereby formally lodge my opinion that the Recession does not exist -- either that, or it always existed -- since all the money, resources, energy, and raw materials situated on Planet Earth still exist today.
That is all.
Posted byPortlyDyke at 10:33 PM
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I hereby formally lodge my opinion that the Recession does not exist
:-) I love this blog.
Just saying.
Ha! Brilliant :)
Although I'm lucky enough to remain (so far) unaffected by the recession agreements of others, so that probably influences my opinions...
Yup.
Yeah! And I keep wondering that the big "losses" that everyone is so up in arms about are "future losses," the money "we would have made." It doesn't seem to really exist in the present anyway, so perhaps a "recession" is a clever disguise for a push toward being in the present?
Lambness