Economy Needs to Become More Local

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Published on Friday, October 24, 2008 by The Coulee News (Wisconsin)
Economy Needs to Become More Local
by Dave Skoloda


In an earlier period of hard times for Americans, my grandmother Florence I. Skoloda sat at her kitchen table and noted in her little blue diary that she had paid $20 on her grocery bill having just received a $32 pension check.

The pension was from the federal government based on my grandfather John's service in the Spanish American War. He had died two months before her entry dated Nov. 12, 1938, just a few days after Kate Smith sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" for the first time on her radio show.

What struck me when I read that entry a decade ago when I found the book among my father's things after he died was that Grandma's neighborhood grocer had trusted her with credit even during the Great Depression.

I revisited Grandma's little blue book last week after reading James Surowiecki's analysis of our present financial debacle in his column "The Financial Page" that appears regularly in the New Yorker magazine. Surowiecki wrote that the credit meltdown reflected a lack of faith in the models and systems lenders relied on to evaluate risk.

While the financial system had vastly increased the amount of lending, it also came at a cost. "The problem with an impersonal system is that when the models fail, and when companies' ratings become suspect, everything is called into question. Lenders can't fall back on their own judgments of a specific company or individual, because such judgments aren't part of their typical decision-making process," he wrote. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/24-6

was right in our neighborhood - about 1 square mile.

Church, bank, savings and loan, stores, movie theater, entertainment, restaurants (although I can count on one hand the number of times we "ate out" in 20 years..) etc.

I didn't go downtown (Chicago)until I was 18 to have a high school graduation photo taken. I still don't like going there.

Really? Downtown Chi-town is awesome.