Materialism and cosnumerism is all fun until someone loses an eye- er, economy.

And here I was all these years being told that as long as governments kept printing money all would be well. "All the other countries are doing it," they said. I always equated it with a family constantly getting more and higher interest credit cards until nobody legitimate would lend them anything more... and so they went to the loan sharks. Then finally their legs would get broken and they'd lose their house and things anyway, only messier and with substantially more insult and injury.

Governments are not just like people. They *are* people, only with authority to more often, though still only temporarily, circumvent both their own laws and the laws of economics. Nature almost always wins.