Money Management 101

I am trying to understand, I really am. I'm trying to figure out how our elected officials can miss such simple aspects of money management and the consequences of mismanagement. Maybe a required mandatory Money Management for Idiots class would help.....maybe. Let me give you an example of what I am thinking about. Let's think hypothetically that I am having a hard time financially, I'm not making ends meet, my household is struggling, and I need to help the cash flow. So instead of getting a second job, instead of cutting spending I decide to charge up my credit card. Oops didn't quite work, now all I have is a maxed out credit card, so I get a second credit card and max it out too. Then a third and a fourth until suddenly I don't qualify anymore and I can't get anymore credit cards. Then I do something really crazy. I begin making my own credit cards to pay off my other credit cards and continue spending. I can make as many credit cards as I want until suddenly the fraud is exposed and it all comes crashing down.

Stupid right? Exactly, but what I am talking about is the announcement from the Fed yesterday to set aside one trillion dollars to buy treasury notes. Let me tell you how I am interpreting this announcement. No one is willing to buy our debt and so we are selling it to ourselves. The Treasury is printing money, giving it to the Fed who is in turn using that money to buy debt from the Treasury to then stimulate the economy. DOESN'T ANYONE SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS!!!!!! There is no way to support this long term. This is a last resort type move and if it doesn't work we are in serious, serious trouble economically! We are paying off our credit cards with other credit cards and hoping nothing goes wrong and then we create our own credit cards because no one will give us credit and we think it will end up working out. We haven't fixed the fundamental problem!!!!!! It is pretty much a cliche now but the phrase "you cannot fix a problem created by overspending with more spending" is so simplistically true I can only assume that corruption is the reason our government is going down the road it is going. Boy are we in trouble.