A Sea Change

Ernest Hemingway's The Sea Change, a story of a young man named Phil coming to terms with the changed nature of his relationship with his lover, can definitely be analogous to what many Americans are going through in this financial mess, but I think the Washington Post's David Ingatius has put some of it into a healthy perspective:

We are beginning a painful process of deleveraging our debt-addicted economy, but that's in many ways beneficial. Martin Wolf noted in the Financial Times that U.S. household indebtedness jumped from 50 percent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 100 percent in 2007, while financial sector debt increased from 21 percent of GDP to 116 percent over the same period. We have all been participants in this one, I'm
afraid, and the appropriate, if painful, cure is to save a bit more and consume a bit less.

Surely it's hard to disagree with such quantifiable data, and I assume that many who fall under this umbrella of indebtedness will soon find out that, yes indeed, the America we knew has changed. Let's just hope it's for the better.