Managing Money..or not

THE GOOD NEWS is, warren buffet says that the big banks in the  united states are in good health, and that there is little or no risk of further bank failures dragging the american economy into another bladk hole, and that, in general, the economic outlook is A Okay.

Now of course that comes from a man who should be called "the oracle of optimism", instead of "the oracle of omaha". Great guy, mr buffet, always ready to pick up our moods. But is he right? My beloved Bank of America, after all, is, for isntance, still suffering from the wrong purchase at the wrong time, that of the country-wide company, which to date has cost B o A something like forty billion, including all the really stupid mortgages it has on its books.

And don't you just love the fact that huge financial services corporations buy and sell our mortgages by the millions as if they were mere paper, and our lives, mere paper?

We do not always allocate resources wisely in this profit at all cost culture. In america, even local governments are perfectly happy to play fun games with our precious public revenues. I was shocked when I found out that a big town near where i live is building an indoor football practice field, of considerable size and expense, for its high school.

Instead this town, fayetteville, arkansas, should be building another high school, since there are nearly one hundred thousand people in town, and the high school population is over three thousand. By building an indoor football field instead of annother high school, fayetteville not only keeps all its good football players on one well stocked team, but provides better facilities for the sport simultaneously. And this might be considered kinda sick. Football? THAT important???

When i found out that large towns all over america now have indoor football practice fields, i was even more shocked. A friend of mine teaches at a nearby high school in another town, springdale, arkansas, and he said "hell, we have an indoor football field also".  I couldn't believe it.

Our banks loan money to people who have no way to pay it back, and our local governments build indoor football fields instead of spending the money repairing crumbling sewer systems or better educating students.

WE are told by conservatives that the banks only make risky loans because the government forces them to, in order to provide home ownership opportunities to lower income americans.

Could it be that both the private and the public sector in america could use some lessons on how to manage money? Is the united states the most financially irresponsible country in human history?