Reply #28: On an individual basis, this is obviously the best route to financial security, however... [View All]

[El Pinko]

...if the majority of Americans do this belt-tightening, stop with the credit cards and home equity loans and frivolous spending, it will cause a huge economic contraction and the loss of millions of jobs.

And no amount of belt-tightening will help people for whom there are no jobs.

Wealthy investors watching their stocks and dividends fall will look for other investments and further slow growth.

I agree with you in principle, but without a serious effort by government and corps to replace the millions of good paying jobs that have been shipped overseas, our economy will be a basket-case without all the personal debt/consumer spending.

Clinton did nothing about the debt/consumer economy or the flight of good jobs, and was basically just 8 more years of Reaganomics, but we were fortunate to have a tech explosion in the nineties. I hope Obama will be different than Bill Clinton in this respect.