Commentary:
Take it Personally by Julianne Malveaux
I keep wanting to write something totally erudite about the economic crisis that will cause our country to bail out banks to the tune of a trillion dollars, but I cannot.
There is something deep inside me that I want to say about how egregious this bailout is, but words escape me. Even as I search for special words, I see myself looking eyeball to eyeball with a student whose parent is now unemployed, which means her tuition and fees will go unpaid.
Or, I see myself having a conversation with my financial aid officer, a phenomenal young woman named Keisha Ragsdale, who will tell me how much money she needs to keep some of our highest achieving students enrolled. There is something to say about the way our economy is melting down, about those who benefited and those who did not. And then there is something else to say. This is not personal. But each of us needs to take it personally.
In other words, this is a wake-up call for every American who has been careless with her money. This is a wake-up call for anyone who needs to look at her portfolio and figure out how to balance it. This is a painful holler for anyone who doesn’t know what she is worth or how her pension fund is invested. It’s time for all of us to take this crisis personally.
Most of the folks who read my words do not earn seven or eight figures. Most Americans are not millionaires; most of us work hard for the money. Most of us have issues and challenges and many of us struggle with those challenges.
The mortgage is too high; the paycheck is too low; the grown kids have moved back home; the spouse has lost a job. It’s a rough thing, being out there, trying to figure out how to make ends meet. It is utterly galling that 535 people are rescuing bankers and nobody is rescuing us. And some of this crisis is utterly manufactured.
No matter. We have to take this nonsense personally because it affects us.
Now is the time to pick up one of those personal finance books and implement a plan. Now is the time for each of us to become financial literacy warriors, pushing, focusing, fighting to make sure we understand everything we need to know about this economy. Put down the metro section of the paper and pick up the business section. Now is the time for us to be as passionate about cash as we once were about celebrities.
“It is utterly galling that 535 people are rescuing bankers and nobody is rescuing us.”
When we take it personally, we can get it -- we can get on program about the things that we must do to survive the next two years. Yes, two years. It will take that long to turn the economy around and the new president, whoever he is, will be shackled by the funk of this economic crisis for awhile. We don’t need a drama king who suspends campaigns to deal with something he has no control over. We need a steady hand at the rudder. And even with a steady hand, we each need to take this personally.
Let me be clear. We didn’t do this. Somebody is reading and chafing and asking, ‘why should I have to bear the burden of the banks? Why must I take the weight of irresponsible profiteers?’ If you are a renter, you are especially aggrieved. You are financing a go-go that you didn’t even get to attend.
No matter. In this crisis, we are in the same boat. Were I a member of Congress I’d manage this very differently, but I’m not. My professional family, the faculty, staff, students and parents at Bennett College for Women are in crisis around this madness and I’m writing as if they are reading. This is personal because survival is personal. This is a clarion call for all of us to immerse ourselves in the business of financial literacy and to remember, as our ancestors did, to thrive, not just survive, in hard times. When we take it personally, we make prudent personal decisions. We spend prudently, we save, we invest, we exhale and we remember that we are not defined by our possessions but by our hearts.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux, an economist, is president of Bennett College for Women. She can be reached at presoffice@bennett.edu.