I find that my personal life these days is somewhat contradictory with my stated thoughts and fears over the economy and the direction this nation is heading in.

Let me say that first of all, I am EXTREMELY lucky to be married to a beautiful-career-oriented-corporate-attorney-Super-Mom who allowed me the luxury of leaving my dead-end job a year ago to start my own company and still puts up with my irregular income earning to this day. I am sure that if my wife wasn’t as understanding or as generous as she is, or if she were more worried about her job security at the moment, I’d be banging my head against the wall looking for a job in a bad economy in an industry (energy trading) whose best days are long behind it. So in that sense I am extremely lucky; I haven’t been exposed to the economy or the job market quite directly yet in the same way that I know millions of Americans have been. 

Nonetheless, many of the things happening in the economy right now scare the bejeezus out of me.

I’m 35 and I readily admit that in my adult working life I have never really seen true hardship aside from maybe the 12 months or so after 9/11 and Enron and Worldcom. Hell, even in my entire life I haven’t really known hard times: I don’t remember the 70’s at all except for New Year’s Eve 1979 (literally), and I only have vague memories of hearing radio newscasts about auto industry layoffs in what I presume was the early 80’s.

That’s it. That’s the extent of my economic hardship experience. So when I say that I’m scared about the economy, I really don’t have a frame of reference. Maybe I’m completely off base.

But what I do know is that unemployment keeps getting higher and the federal debt just keeps growing – thanks to corrupt politicians on both sides who care only about buying reelection and kicking the costs down the road – and that the my expensive Ivy League economics degree tells me that I need to worry about severe inflation being the end of result of both of these things. Throw in confiscatory tax rates, feckless foreign policy, and purposely divisive domestic policy and all of a sudden I can foresee a lot of problems coming to pass in this country and 

But despite all of that, as I said at the beginning of this post, there is a major disconnect between my thoughts and my actions these days: we’re house shopping and I’m actively trying to expand my business.

Huh?  

Well, as the parents of a two year old with another child on the way, we need a bigger house that’s closer to my wife’s work. She currently has a 30 minute commute and if I work from home there is no reason for us not to be closer to her office. Not to mention that my business, however slowly, is growing and I really need a proper home office.

Yeah, our country and its economy may be going to hell in a handbasket, but the Greenes are shopping for a McMansion on the rice fields of Fort Bend County.

Rationally, I know that what we should do is sell our house and move into a two bedroom apartment and then take all the cash we can muster and buy gold. Instead, we’re mortgage shopping and oohing and ahhing over powder rooms and wall ovens. Yeah, it’s a little crazy. 

So after that whole long introduction I finally get to the point of this post: I was sitting in the car yesterday listening to the radio while my wife was talking with a sales agent inside a model home when the news came on that Rick Wagoner was resigning from GM at the direct request of President Obama. 

To quote Tony Soprano: Are you f’ing kidding me? 

See, I know that it’s an overused phrase most of the time, but c’mon, this is America!

I used to think that direct government meddling in public corporations didn’t happen here. This is the kind of stuff that Hugo Chavez does. We hear about this in places like Sierra Leone or Indonesia or Argentina. Places that are basket cases in the first place – and here’s the deal government meddling in the economy is the reason that they’re basket cases!

How is this happening here?