The Beginning of the End?

My grandfather always used to drill into me the importance of living within your means and not being a slave to debt from anyone. For the most part, I have followed his advice. I did have a car loan once and of course we did buy a few houses on credit. Now, I can see our retirement accounts shrinking, and we can't seem to sell or rent one of our houses right now....so I do feel a bit poorer than I felt yesterday. But, what is going to happen in our current economy? We have a society that is built on credit, and lots of it....our government can't even seem to function without tons of credit, and therefore debt. We have many Americans who bought stuff and houses that they couldn't afford, not to mention fatcats that overextended their positions and now can't keep up either. It makes me wonder....is our American free market society going the way of the Roman Empire? Is this the beginning of the end?

What are your thoughts on this? I've listened to some of the pundits and talking heads and have talked to friends and neighbors...and more than anything...I hear anger and disgust.....lots of finger pointing...never back at themselves though...but didn't we ALL contribute to this, one way or another?

Another point. With all these supposed smart economists and people out there, are you tellling me that not a single one saw any of this coming? I'm wondering what will happen when the economy gets this infusion of money, aka the bail out. It is supposed to stimulate our economy and get credit markets moving again..and banks lending to each other again. Those with money will supposedly pour tons into the economy to get it moving. But, as a country, we will be many trillions of dollars in debt, won't we? So how will we continue from there? Will there need to be more infusions? Will we move away from a free market society and be run more along the lines of a Big Brother society? Or will we continue to go along, run out of money again, where the government will have to print worthless money, to the point of us rolling wheelbarrow loads of money around to go buy a loaf of bread. We wouldn't be the first country to do this. Remember Germany in the 1930s? That could be us too.

Last point. Here we are struggling as a nation and as a economy...and the Chinese continue to silently...for the most part....plug along. I truly think they will replace us as the next superpower while we are fiddling around here. As I said, the Roman Empire didn't last forever, so what makes us think we can? Just wondering...