intermission - world finances

I know next to nothing about finances. I usually figure if I have enough money in the bank to pay my bills - I am doing OK. Anything more than that is usually beyond me. But I have made a special attempt to understand what in heaven’s name is happening in Europe. This is the best I can come up with.

If I want to buy something but don’t have the cash on hand – I go to the bank and borrow some money (well actually I don’t do that – but I know lots of folks who do). The bank tells me how much it will cost me to borrow the money, I agree and we all sign a pile of forms. If I lose my job or for some other reason I can’t pay what I owe, then either I can declare bankruptcy or perhaps the bank and I negotiate a different payment scheme.  But what the bank does not do is raise the cost of borrowing the money!

But that is what I think is happening in Greece and Italy. They need to borrow money to run their country. You can’t build a hospital or repair the roads without borrowing money. Because of the economic downturn many countries are having a difficult time raising funds through taxes. The people are earning less and therefore there is less money in the system. But banks, rather than negotiating with the countries to reduce their payments, are raising the interest rates and thereby making it harder for the countries to do business. When, because of the rising interest payments, the countries can no longer manage their economy, then there is a major crisis.

In other words while there is a small financial crisis in terms of the various lending institutions not getting their money (and of course their huge profits) back as soon as they had planned, the crisis is made far worse by those same financial institutions raising the cost of borrowing the money. In other words they are creating the crisis.

Please someone – tell me this is not true!!!

On the Road Again 2011 #38

It was now getting close to 7:00 pm. I had been on the road since 6:00 that morning. I was cold and damp. My shoes still squished when I walked.  I felt as if I needed to eat something. Hitchhiking while shivering appears to burn a lot more calories than hitching in the sun. As I walked though the rest of the rest of Hope (which is a charming little town) I passed a Greek restaurant attached to a little motel. It looked very tempting. It had been grey all day and now it was starting to get dark. Not that darkness that gently comes after a pleasant day, but the darkness that comes  after a miserable day, the kind of darkness that reminds one that fall is coming and that it is time to find a place to burrow in for the winter. I wanted to stop. But in some silly tribute to my supposed toughness I didn’t check into that motel or the next one. I kept on walking and every time I heard a car I turned around and stuck out my thumb. I walked slowly, trying to keep those motels in sight for as long as possible. I knew that I would not be sleeping on the ground tonight. I saw no reason to get too far away from my warm bed.

However a car did stop and offer me a ride to Kamloops. I would have been a fool to turn down the offer so I got in. Kamloops is only a two hour drive from Hope, but psychologically it is more than that. Hope in my mind is still attached to Vancouver. One can, as proven by my last driver, commute back and forth. People in Hope shop in Vancouver for the big items. Kamloops, while it is not my favourite town because it is so spread out, it is hard to walk though and still illegal to hitchhike along the highway, is far enough away from Vancouver that the traveler knows they are well on their way.

My driver was driving his wife’s Subaru after dropping some friends off in Vancouver. He was a miner which for some reason surprised me. Perhaps because I had never been picked up by a miner before I some how assumed that mining only happens in the far north or somewhere equally as remote.  While it is not a job I had ever considered for myself, I could see why it was an attractive option. My driver was happy in his job. It allowed him to live in a beautiful part of the country and offered good prospects for the future as long as the price of gold remained high.  

We spent most of the two hours or so talking about his family, most particularly his mother who had raised her family on what used to be called the Queen Charlotte islands ( but is more rightly now called Haida Quai).  She still lived on the 3,000 acre piece of property, living a life that sounded as if she was homesteading. His dad had been a logger and had been gone for part of each year as he was growing up. His mom had had to do all of the work required to support and maintain the family. There weren’t and it sounded as if there still weren’t a lot of stores to buy food. So she grew her own and then she preserved it for the long winter months. My driver worried about his mom but he was also so proud of her toughness and her resiliency.  He knew that she had raised him well. He had good values. He knew who and what he was and how he wanted to live his life. He had tried the city life for a while but clearly he was happiest in an area where the wilderness was not too far away. I suspect he was also more comfortable working with men who needed to, and could trust each other with their lives. I think he was happy living a life where things were quite black and white. There are times when I envy such people.

My driver, thankfully, was going to the far end of town. That meant that I did not have to walk a long the highway for another hour to get to a good spot to hitch from the next morning. There also happened to be a few motels just a few 100 feet back from where he let me off.

I was done for the day. In spite of the lousy weather and the difficult hitchhiking conditions, I had got three rides and was now well on my way. It was time to eat, to make sure my stuff inside my pack was dry, and to sleep.