The Melting of American Wealth

How did we get so poor so fast? Under the radar of stimulus bills and bailouts, economists are toting up the damage and super-investors like Warren Buffet are still trying to figure out what happened.

Now we learn the economy is shrinking twice as fast as originally thought--at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent in the last three months of 2008 rather than the original estimate of 3.2, making it the worst quarter since 1982.

The downward spiral, reflected in a sinking stock market, has troubled banks taking taxpayer money but hesitating to lend and nervous companies laying off workers (an expected 700,000 job losses in February) leading to deeper consumer cuts in spending that will deprive businesses of revenue and more falling behind on house, car and credit card payments, multiplying losses throughout the financial system.

Looking back at how all this happened, even the Sage of Omaha is blaming himself for doing "some dumb things" but aiming most of his scorn at derivatives devised by “a nerdy-sounding priesthood, using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like...Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”

With typical Warren Buffet bluntness, he concludes, “Participants seeking to dodge troubles face the same problem as someone seeking to avoid venereal disease: It’s not just whom you sleep with, but also whom they are sleeping with.”

But Buffet's aw-shucks posture of earthy wisdom is too easy on himself and lesser investors who thrived in a world where manipulating money was the most prized skill of all, at the extremes allowing con artists like Bernard Madoff to bilk so-called savvy investors of billions.

Now, as the government tries to move money into the real world--agricultural subsidies from corporate farms to feeding poor children, students loans from private banks to direct Pell grants--much of the effort is still going into propping up "too big to fail" entities like AIG, the remnants of a financial system that detached itself from reality and shows few signs of finding its way back.

When the stimulus money finally starts flowing into the hands of people who work and make things or help sick people or teach children, that will be a sign that the downward spiral may finally be ending.