BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE $34 BILLION?

Welcome to the Second Great Depression. Don't think of it as a hardship, but an opportunity. You and I can experience hard lessons and deprivations that will last a lifetime and in this way become an annoyance to our grandchildren. Remember Gramps telling you about the bread lines, the cold, dark factories and the itinerant laborers crisscrossing the nation in search of a day's pay? Or Granny with her tales of thin soup and threadbare clothing? Those were days of uncertainty and doubt, when America became a poor nation overnight. Through years of hard work, government programs and a boost from the biggest war ever, America recovered and emerged as the financial powerhouse of the world, the most successful society ever created.

Until now, that is. When you have the bosses of the Big 3 automakers begging Congress for $34 billion in loans to keep their doors open and the millions of jobs their industry represents intact, well, recession is sort of a mild word, and the soaring jobless rate and home foreclosures tell us we're in a real live depression. And this is after the government has already gotten us on the hook for $700 billion to bail out the felons running our banking, investment and insurance industries. Congress seems hesitant to help the auto makers, who are merely stupid and not criminals like their counterparts in the financial sector. This is another piece of living history we can tell our grandkids about, when the producers were turned away in favor of the predators, and the opportunities to change the way cars are built and wealth managed were squandered by politicians on the take. Take that, Gramps and Granny!

While that may not be a comfort to those among us struggling to keep a roof over our families' heads and bread on our tables, we need to look at the big picture here. Can we not take comfort in knowing that some rich people are scaling back their own lifestyles from owning a half dozen palatial homes to merely two or three? Or that private jet ownership is on the decline? Must we so selfishly become obsessed with the declining standard of our own lives and those of our deprived children? For while we may be out on the street soon, at least we are not being embarrassed in the court of public opinion like the billionaire frauds who go us into this calamity. Is there no consolation in that?

Perhaps not. After all, our children have this annoying insistence on being spoiled by eating 3 times a day. Every day! And then there's the expense of putting clothes on their backs that they outgrow swiftly. And in today's modern world, they must have computers and other high tech devices and attend college too or run the risk of being unemployable. And the little shits keep getting the sniffles and all sorts of other maladies that require the expensive attention of doctors. On top of all this, they fully expect Mom and Dad to house them in a safe and warm place for the long duration of their childhoods! They know or care little about recessions and depressions and the great need of the ruling elite to live like royalty. They just don't get it!

And so we as adults must endure the hardships and pass on the wisdom our experiences have given us. We must tell our children and grandchildren that the hard times will always revisit us from time to time, whenever the super-weathy are feeling the pinch in their priceless art budgets and feel the need to sell your job overseas or steal your pension funds to finance a Renoir or two for one of their beach houses or mountaintop villas. We must teach our children that it is our responsibility to work more for less money so as not to disturb the natural order of things, that order being the masses supporting the few in unimaginable luxury so as to keep the American dream alive.

Everyone knows that almost no one will ever join these elites, but one or two of us here and there will be allowed to attain great wealth so that the rest of us can keep dreaming as we toil. And if we demand too much or allow our expectations to grow past the treadmill existence for which Americans are famous, well, the hammer is going to come down on a whole bunch of us for failing to maintain the rich at acceptably luxurious levels. Look at this as a period of adjustment and pay heed to the needs of our CEOs. When they've got enough toys, palaces and gadgets, prosperity will once again return to the land. If we fail, they will keep stealing the eyes from our heads. Meanwhile, do your best to get Junior his Cheerios. A good breakfast is the key to facing another bleak day.