The Dawn of a New Age

Yikes! It's official. The Democrats pretty much won the entire election. This scares me a bit, not because the President is a Democrat, but because when one party controls the White House and both branches of the Congress it also means they are not far away from gaining control of the judicial branch of our government as well. I would be just as concerned if it were the Republicans in power. It's just not healthy for one political party to wield that much power.

Historically speaking it would have been a major upset if the Republicans had retained control of the presidency. Never in the history of democracy has the current party remained in power when a recession occurred during their term of office. Not just in the United States, but in every democratic country in the world history shows us that the people punish the people in power and move to change everything when election time rolls around. In a time of economic prosperity they reward the people in office and elect them to another term. This holds true whether political policy is shown to impact the economy or not.

Interestingly, we can chart the economy and predict when the next upswing or recession will occur... it doesn't matter who's in office or what the rest of the world is doing... the economy follows the same cycle over and over again. It may vary by a couple years but for the most part we know there will be recessions and there will be times of prosperity. The important lesson we need to take from that knowledge is that the times of abundance will end and the times of trial will end as well. We just need to ride it out, be personally responsible with our finances, and expect the boom and bust trends to continue. Our economy is never static. It's always waning and waxing. Citizens tend to make decisions based on the situation of the moment, not looking ahead to better (or worse) times that are sure to come.

Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it.