Large or Small? For Here or To Go? Bailout or Recession?

I consider myself pretty Renaissance-lots of interests, more than one “intelligence.” But economics has always escaped me. I actually fell asleep in my economics class in high school, which was a feat for me-I think it’s the only class I slept through. I mean, I at least made an attempt with math, and with sizeable effort, I managed to get a little through my head. But economics? Nothing. It doesn’t help that any article-even the journalistic ones-write as if you already know what the hell “” is. I mean, economics isn’t just confusing to me-it’s downright impenetrable. It’s as if you already need to know and understand economics to understand anything in economics!
It also doesn’t help that, since my debt-ridden parents have always steered me very, very clear of a credit card or anything similar, and the fact that I just graduated college and have not started a career and thus have no retirement plan, I haven’t the least idea about mortgages or equity loans or… what have you. It’s a whole big total mess to me. The media is already doing a fantastic job of fear-mongering (“Recession! The sky is falling! Recession!”) but my own ignorance is taking a toll too. I’m really not used to just “taking somebody’s word on something,” whether that be a politician’s, a journalist’s, or my next door neighbor’s. (Professors are the exception-they actually grade you on how well you take them at their word.) I investigate for myself, and I draw my own conclusion.
But this, what would you call it, Wall Street vs. Main Street Fallout, is perplexing, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. Wait… $700 billion to buy back bad… what? Bad securities? What securities? And… where will these bad securities go? Will they just disappear? How did this happen again, besides the obvious answers of “greed” and “capitalism?” Is the bailout a good thing-the World seems to hate us for failing to pass the bailout? But wait, why does the world hate us (more than usual, anyway?) Didn’t they play a part in it too? I mean, if the world’s economies are coming tumbling down because of the fall of mortgage and insurance giants (how are the two fields related again??) doesn’t that mean the other countries’ own Wall Streets played a part, as well?
When it comes to money and all that, I really am quite simple. I work this amount-you give me this amount. I use that said amount and that said amount only to buy goods and services. If I don’t have said amount, I don’t buy said goods or services.

However, I might also be kind of lucky. If I read the newspapers correctly, hellfire is raining down onto America even as we speak, and homeless, jobless zombies roam the street in search of low-interest loans. Meanwhile, in Japan, the newspapers in English seem by and large uninterested, except to note there are a few lessons for their own balancing economies. (Though here I show my ignorance again-aren’t economies always balancing? Are they ever stable? It seems every time I stumbled onto the Economics page, it was perpetually tipping one way or the other.) I continue to work, they continue to pay me, and an article about the out-of-work NOVA teachers finding jobs as onsen translators dominates the front page.

In other news, the teachers at my one school like to start English class off with an English song, which we listen to all month. Great! I think it’s a fantastic idea. Except my English teachers seem to have a knack for picking songs that make me grind my teeth in irritation… today we started off October with “We Are The World,” that corny, ridiculous anthem to self-important celebrities that just so perfectly sums up the mid 80’s. To be fair, the darn song is actually in the textbook as an example of “English songs”-and glancing through the list, it’s one of the better selections.

Though, my students continue to surprise me. While getting ready for Sports Day on Saturday (an entry that is coming, I promise,) I weeded the parade ground with a bunch of ichinensei girls, who very sweetly tried to speak English with me by pulling out phrases from their textbook (“Large or small?” “For here, or to go?”) The biggest shock, however, was when one 7th grader girl asked “Obama or McCain?” When I just sort of stared at her in stunned silence, she said,” Obama!”

Indeed.