I think that we have finally reached a situation where the US is made to realise that all the hubris which has lasted for decades is misplaced. The horrific war in Iraq based on "weapons of mass destruction", the catastrophy that is Gaza which would not have happened without US complicity, the mess that is Afghanistan, the world-wide influence of putrid foul-mouthed Hollywood, the rewarding of Wall Street executives with bonuses paid by taxpayers for terrible world-impacting irresponsibility, the impunity of US leaders for crimes such as the firebombing of Japan and Germany followed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Roosevelt's handing over to Stalin of Poland and Eastern Europe after WW2 after the issue of Poland's freedom had been the cause of the war, the joyful acceptance of Uncle Joe Stalin as ally after he was responsible for the deaths of at least 6 million of his own people in 1932-3, the list goes on and on.. Yahweh is righteous, and will not let this evil continue unpunished.

Your comparison of men's and women's spending on clothes is legalistic, in that statistics cannot reveal whether the spending is wise, prudent, or in accord with God's will.

An economy driven by comsuption, in time, is a good as termites are for a wooden structure! Coined by H. D. Schmidt, the writer of it. It is the most condemned system by the very Scripture. It is satanic in principle because, materialism becomes even the God of Christianity. The Scripture labels it as the love of money! No wonder that Christianity seems to be in decline in the Western world, while hungry people in the world now number over 1 billion! America even spends over 40 billion a year on dogs and pets, mostly spend on gadgets etc., etc., etc.

First, as a person who is involved in the financial markets on a daily basis, I have to reject that we are in a "recession". This is no less than a complete restructuring of the global economic system. The previous concepts of what is of intrinsic value(example: except for the land and location a house is a depreciating asset), consumer vs. saving society(example: cult of celebrity and fashion as opposed to a few items of quality with changing accessories) , multi-generational wealth(example: embracing the European, Asian, Middle East concepts in of growing assets in a family), demographics(example: the new global Middle Class will be Brazil, Russia, India and China), global banking and financial institutions, digitized capital, globalization is - and will continue - to change everything. We are entering a new age that will be more disruptive than the Depression . . . and global in nature. We have only begun to see the beginnings!

The problem we have is that we've accepted as economically viable a "consumer" economy where we ship all the jobs that actually make or do things to other countries, import back those goods and services and "consume" them here and assume we can live on our national credit card forever. NO DOUBT we need to consume a little less and save a little more, but lets not kid ourselves, it's not the consuming that is killing us, it's the LACK of producing. Walmart does a booming business selling us things made in China while you call Bangalore for help with your I-pod. It's crazy. And it's not some sort of moral crisis, at least not on the individual level, it's a crisis of leadership, both in the government and in our major corporations that have allowed this to happen. Hopefully this recession will at least wake us up to the need to re-invigorate the manufacturing base of this country so when we consume at least we'll be buying stuff we made and not putting it on the Chinese tab...