Fixing the Economy: “Ordinary” Folks Weigh In
November 12, 2008 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by Market Place from American Public Media. A reporter had seen some of the posts on this blog about the economy (you can read some of them here, here, here and here), and wanted to interview me. I went in for a 15 minute interview at my local NPR radio station and — not surprising to me since I’ve actually worked in radio — I ended up with a couple of small sound bites at the end of a news package focused on “ordinary” people offering ideas for fixing the economy.
But it was still cool, and it was awesome that someone from a national news organization found my blog and wanted to talk to me. Listen to the clip. And then weigh in with your own ideas on fixing the economy in the comments section.
Tres cool, Miranda!
Thanks! I was pretty psyched about it…
That’s exciting news:) Congrats!
Not sure I know how to fix the economy, but I think talking to the average person, instead of the big company lobbyists would be a good start.
Thanks, Linette. It does, at least, offer a perspective that isn’t all about trying to get us to spend, spend, spend to keep Wall Street going.
Miranda – enjoyed listening. Your fellow “ordinary Americans” had some comments that were off the reservation but yours made sense. Time for you to hire an agent?
Thanks, Mr.! It’s always nice to know that someone else thinks I’m on the right track :)
Nicely done, Miranda. I especially liked the financial literacy idea.
Now if we could just make a financial literacy GED a requirement for being in Congress…. :)
Congrats on the interview!
Miranda, your problem is that you have way too much common sense, which won’t endear you to those who want ‘them’ to fix things so ‘I’ can continue as I always have :)
Congratulations on the start of your celebrity; I hope you’ll remember us little people when you are famous!
It’s pretty cool.
Nice job! I think your comments made the most common sense. I’d vote for ya!
Thanks Mark, Miki, Tracee and Amber!
It was fun to do the interview. Although I wish some of the other points I made could have been used. But that’s the risk we take when we talk to the media. They pick out what they think is most interesting. I do it too. At any rate, I did meet my goal of not sounding like a complete idiot.
So, yay.
Great idea, Miranda. We teach stuff like calculus in our schools and instead we should be teaching people how to “think financially.” Maybe if we did that we wouldn’t have so many politicians who say stupid things and stupid people who believe them. (I don’t mean these people are stupid overall, just financially illiterate.
Jean
Thanks, Jean. While there are plenty of people who don’t do what they’ve been taught, I do think that some sort of financial literacy would at least be a good start — it might do some good, even if only a few of the kids put the principles into practice.
I have an idea what would help turn the economy around in a hurry before it affects holiday shopping any more than it has too. Take the 700 billion dollar bail out package & subside fuel. If we cut fuel prices to $1.00 a gallon nation wide for at least two years it would give people more money in they’re pockets & start spending again. The economy would change and would help the auto makers sell vehicles. This is from a business owner’s perspective. This is a quick summary of my idea.
An interesting idea. Transportation costs certainly are cutting into budgets. While I disagree with you (I think that this would prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, which would cause other problems for the economy down the road), it is certainly an intriguing idea — and one that would also affect grocery prices (by bringing down transport costs).
Bull doze down all bank owned homes. Im not serious about that of course, but the effect would be to reduce the home inventory and make my house worth more. That seems to be the basic problem, getting home prices to increase. The fed needs to raise interest rates to fight the devaluation of materials used to build a home. and FHA and HUD should make loans directly to people like me with great fico scores, and good jobs. Instead of waiting for the bailout money given to banks to trickle down, bypass them and loan directly to the people 3% fixed $500 closing costs. I would buy a distressed home at a bargain and hire people to fix it up. Jobs created, home prices increasing, economy fixed.
Interesting thought, Dave! I do agree that things should be done to help people who are not in trouble yet. After all, the various “fixes” the government is coming up with only kick in after payments are missed — rewarding deliberately risky behavior. Another interesting idea is this one, of foreclosure vouchers: http://banks.com/blogs/mortgages/2008/11/20/are-foreclosure-vouchers-the-answer-to-the-mortgage-market-mess/
I read David Colander’s plan, but i would like to see us break out of the “bail out” mode, i.e if GM has a failing business model, give them a choice. Change and modernize and the government will help you with the technology and retooling thru loans, or keep the current course and fail. In the same way the government could offer loans(or guarantee) to me at twice the interest there getting from the banks fix my costs, I’ll even put 20% down. The banks are sitting on there hands while the housing market screeches to a halt. My 401 is going nowhere, I want to buy houses. The best thing for someone facing foreclosure is seeing the value of their home increase. Supply and demand, get houses selling while we still have jobs.
You are right that “bailout” mode seems to be rather prevalent. I agree that we do need to help those offering solutions, rather than just chucking money at the problem and maintaining the status quo.
Reparing the economy is a no brainer…Take $1,ooo,ooo,ooo and give every household $1oo,ooo.This will have an trickle up effect…D. C. Grear