New Haven Independent

I say that having just read another insightful and thoughtful finance article suggesting I do the exact opposite of the article I read not two days ago. The first one said I should have an absolute minimum of six months salary squirreled away someplace. The next one said I shouldn’t be saving any money at all! I should be spending money, because that will help grow the economy out of the recession.

Part of the problem appears to be that virtually everyone sees himself as a financial guru these days. Some actually know what they are talking about. The rest? Last week it was flipping mortgages. This week it’s portfolios.

And then there are the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity with their keen financial insight and years of practical, professional financial experience. On top of their voluminous knowledge, they’ll happily give a soapbox to anyone who knows how to dial a phone and call a talk show. Talk show callers are a special breed. As soon as they get done driving the taxi they’ll fix the worlds’ economic problems.

And every complex problem has a simple answer. Just ask them.

If that weren’t bad enough, everywhere you turn these days you’ll find a conservative with a mouth and a medium who can’t wait to tell us how to fix everything. Let the banks, the brokerage houses and the auto companies all go under, they say. They couldn’t compete.

Ooopsy: Weren’t the people telling me to let everything go “belly up” the ones in charge during the years before everything fell apart?

Back in the 1970s and ‘80’s, when times were tough and credit was tight, Americans saved upwards of 10 percent of their annual income. As things started to get better in the ’90s they started spending more and saving less — a lot less. In 2007 they saved less than a half percent of their annual income. Last year: zero.

So what about all those people who didn’t get a chance to put six months of savings in the mattress because they were too busy doing what the last group of know-it-alls told them to do — which was spend, spend, spend, because housing prices will always go up up up! What do they do now? Whom are they supposed to listen to this time?

This is really all about credibility. Whom do we believe these days? Do we rest our own personal futures and those of America on the passing opinion of just about anyone, or do we require that someone reporting or advising us have some credentials — any — credentials before we take them seriously?

Me? I am hoping for a miracle. I am hoping that Americans tell all of the talk show blabbermouths who were experts on how John McCain would win or Sarah Palin was a rocket scientist and are now experts on finance and the economy to just shut up. I don’t care if they talk about politics until they use up all the air in the room. The economy is serious stuff and we should leave it to serious people.

As the phone company used to say, “talk is cheap.”