A Funny Sort of Depression?

Victor Davis Hanson has an easy-breezy op-ed out in the San Francisco Chronicle where he points out some prominent negative feedback loops first brought to my attention by Charles Hugh Smith on his blog, although Hanson doesn't use that particular term to describe them. Compliments to him for distilling some dense numbers into a digestible format.

However, here again is the latest example of someone saying "things can't be so bad, because I just saw people buying things at the mall."

I live in southeastern Fresno County, one of the poorest regions of a now nearly bankrupt California. Many people are hurting. Yet to go to the local Wal-Mart is to see late-model cars in the parking lots and plenty of cell phones, iPods and BlackBerrys among the shoppers. Carts are stuffed with consumer goods, lots of food and Easter confections.

I don't know what all is involved in becoming a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, but I sincerely hope it involves more than an anecdotal trip down the block to buy tube socks.

We (by which I mean America) didn't get ourselves into this jam by the virtue of our tremendous foresight and excellent personal financial management skills. Quite the opposite, in fact. Can we please consider the notion that America won't break it's longstanding addiction to consumerism-as-leisure until it absolutely, positively has to? And that just because we haven't reached that point yet doesn't preclude the idea that the problem is not somehow solving itself?

What exactly is suggesting that we've 'learned our lesson' and are now on the road back? If it's people filling carts at Wal-Mart, then I remain respectfully unconvinced.