the soupmenu

i love just watching the economic world currently. Everything has flipped upside down, but we have a great chance to see different theories reflect their true worth. One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is the whole concept of perception of security. Right now everyone is afraid. People have finally began to see the daily life impact of the financial world collapsing and billions of dollars basically evaporating out of the economy.

So now people see the possible bad times ahead, and they have stopped spending. The average American has began to increase their saving to hedge their own lives against a long downturn. The irony of this is that it is the worst thing to happen right now. Spending is the blood of the economy and when it’s not flowing, everything dies.

So while people have been losing their jobs, a greater impact to the economy has been millions of people NOT spending as they normally would. I keep thinking about back to after 9-11 and when bush’s main input was to ‘keep spending’. While a pathetic response to the world at that time, it’s kinda the response that we need right now. If consumption continued as before, we could actually come out of this crisis quite quickly. Instead there is fear and saving which is killing our economy.

I haven’t lived in NYC for long, but i can just tell by the empty restaurants and quiet bars, that this city will not be the same for a while.

I’m a firm believer in the wax and wane of the world. I’ve realized that the push and pull motion of all areas of life are perhaps the most consistent thing about the world. We’ve hit quite an interesting section of life that I’m quite excited for with the current world economic crisis. While part of me definitely wishes this all never happened, a larger part of me is thrilled for the change. My generation has had a unique ride so far. We have really have had no truly bad time in our existence. While other generations fought through fully-involved wars and great depressions, we have only been told to spend more while watching rich girls throw away new cloths on the hills.

My generation is, in fact, a huge part of the meltdown. I have many friends who just a few years ago would state wholeheartedly facts such as ‘housing prices only go up’ and ‘I hope to sell in a year for 20% profit’. They were simply a product of their experiences which have never seen anything other than double digit growth in the housing market.

While there will be a lot of hardship in the upcoming years, there will also be tons of opportunity and growth. With the changing of the guards in the financial world, my generation has a great chance to step in at a young age and make serious impact to the future world. On a micro-level, each one of us has a great chance to purchase stock, land, and resources at low levels in the upcoming year which will surely help out our own retirement planning.

The sweet isn’t so sweet without the bitter. I, for one, am ecstatic for our generation to finally have some serious change to be part of. Hold on for a fun ride.

This is dedication. Yesterday, at one of the 171 NY Starbucks, they were doing construction. With this many stores in the city, and another starbucks a whopping.. 98 feet from the closed one (yes you can even see the other starbucks from the door of the first) you would think that this would not be an issue to the average consumer. Yet starbucks did something nice. They actually were handing out free coffee at the door for anyone walking by.

Did they need to do this….no
Did they make money doing this….no
Did they create a positive impact upon people’s days….yes