DID WE LEARN OUR LESSON YET?

Something struck me over the weekend and as events unfolded today.

It is not that we borrowed against what we didn’t have, or that we didn’t read the paperwork the banker put in front of us, or that we dragged that Xbox and new plasma home when we should have put the money in savings, or that we took a risk on an “sure thing” investment when there clearly was not one. Most of us are to blame for doing one or more of those things over the course of the last decade.

Above is not a chart of our stock portfolio over the last six months (I wish it were). It is a chart of the number of hits the US House of Representatives obtained on their website over the last six months. Check out the right side.

As I tried to find a copy of the bailout bill yesterday - unfiltered, in its entirety - I couldn’t. The House website was down, crashed from all the traffic. Today, when I tried to find out how my representative voted on the bailout - same thing.

Is this the kind of crisis we need to finally REQUIRE accountability from those we send to Washington? Will we finally do more than pop our chad and forget about that person for two, four, or six years, until they come sell us again on all they did right, but offer no view into how they whittled away our democracy and our free market economy?

Since the one common denominator between most of us will be smaller bank accounts or retirement funds, I hope the other is that we begin to take notice not only of their names, but of what they do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis that either serves us or diminishes us. And demand more from them before it gets to this point again. From the look of this chart, maybe this will be the month it begins.