Practical Finances

Thomas Friedman, a reliable columnist for the New York Times, wrote a convincing article , titled “Practice finance the old-fashioned way”, explaining why the American people need to get back to the old-fashioned way of finance. He claims that because the American people stopped caring about how they got things, only that they got them, the lending crisis became bigger and bigger until we hit rock bottom. Friedman states that saving and hard work should still play a big part in our economics, but in most cases they don't. He points out that we have strayed from the standard of saving our money for the things we want and instead we buy want we want first and then worry about how we are going to pay for it.

Mr. Friedman assumes that if the American people had not gone credit happy our country would not be in the financial crisis that it is in today. Does Thomas Friedman have evidence for his claim? If solid logical thinking is considered evidence, then yes, he has evidence. America has been lending excessively. The banks made off with a bundle in the beginning but eventually the money stopped coming in as people failed to pay what they owed. Now if our country had been more conservative with it's lending standards, Friedman argues, none of this would have happened.

Frankly, Friedman as me throughly convinced that he is correct in his assumptions. America has been too lenient with it's lending. If America had thought about how it was paying for things we would not be in this particular economic downfall. Friedman was right on when he said “the Puritan ethic of hard work and saving still matters.” The question is, will people listen.