While discussing the coming Depression provides many reasons for despair, I am optimistic for us as individuals and families and as a nation.

Most importantly, we are not passive; we can take action on our own behalf, starting with our attitude toward a "reduction in lifestyle." One of my aphorisms is "You don't miss what you no longer want." An astonishing amount of the "American lifestyle" is either useless, needless, soul-robbing or actually destructive to those conned into consuming it.

Secondly, ultimately, we control our spending/saving. Looking back, what seemed "impossible"--reducing spending, paying down debt and saving cash-- will turn out not to have been as painful as many expect. And there is an upside--a tremendous upside.

The act of paying off debt is enormously freeing, as astute reader Colleen M. observes:

Normally I am loathe to call extra attention to a good deed I've done; however, I feel the need to tell you why I am donating to your website now.

I have just paid off my last credit card and closed the account. The feeling of freedom from arbitrary changes of rates and terms of my contract (debt-serf agreement) with these companies is unlike any I've experienced. Kind of a calm thrill, a sigh of relief, to be sure.

I still have student loans, but I wanted to show my gratitude for your insight and inspiration at what I feel is a turning point in my financial life. Personally, I feel a sense of empowerment; an ability to say no to the things that waste the money for which I work long, odd hours.

Since this event coincides with what looks to be a turning point in our country's (the world's?) financial life, I feel a sense of grave accomplishment that, in my own small way (and my credit card debts were miniscule compared to many), I have taken a stand against the existing structure of capitalist debt-slavery.

Your website informs, inspires and always entertains. Keep it up.

Like you, I receive junk mail from credit card banks all the time. One from Chase was titled "important notice of change of terms" which explained that the default interest rate (APR) on the card was being raised to 29.99% (Nice touch, eh, not going that last 1/100 to 30%.) The cash advance rate (and oh, how dearly they hope we will run short of cash and cover the shortfall with a fat "cash advance") was going up to 20.99%.

I haven't used this card (a United Airlines Mileage Plus card) in a while nor do I plan to. But after reading Colleen's wonderful email on resisting debt-serfdom, I wrote the requisite "cancel my card" letter, cut the card into pieces and mailed the letter and pieces to Chase.

A small act, perhaps, but revolutionary in two ways: 1) as an act of individual refusal which empowers the individual and 2) imagine if 100 million U.S. consumers all cut up even one credit card and mailed the shards of indebtedness back to its issuers? What if 50 million cut up all their credit cards and mailed back the pieces of serfdom?

Suppose the vast majority of U.S. citizens finally grasped that housing prices will continue falling for another 4-5 years and as a result they refused to get mortgages. (Either buy a house for cash, or don't buy one at all.)

Suppose Americans returned to the values of "Yankee thrift" and saved up to buy a car, should they need one (a recent-vintage used one is about 1/3 to 1/2 cost of a new one.)

Taking this notion of the power of small (perfectly legal) individual steps accumulating into a tsunami of political change, suppose we voted only for candidates who openly called for the bailout debts and other unpayable debts/obligations to be renounced.

After all, the Powers That Be (in both political parties) have raced to print or borrow $8.5 trillion to bail out a "financial system" which deserves to fail, at which point a better, more sustainable and just system can take its place. Why should we the taxpayers spend the rest of our lives in servitude paying interest on that $8.5 trillion? If we no longer opt into the debt-serfdom the "financial system" offered, then why do we care if it fails?

I know, letters of credit are essential to global business, etc. Fine. After Citicorp et al. fail, other solvent banks will step up and offer letters of credit. Nature and financial systems abhor vaccums, and solvent institutions will quickly step in to fill the voids left by the insolvent banks. The disruptions would be brief, especially compared to the centuries of servitude we face in paying interest on $8.5 trillion--precious little of which will ever benefit regular taxpayers.

Cui bono--who benefits? Certainly not the taxpayers, regardless of the propaganda spewed about how "we have to save our financial system." Really? Why? A new one will take the old one's place soon enough, and it wouldn't cost us $8.5 trillion, either.

So here's my Thanksgiving message: we can take control of our nation's finances and politics legally, without violence, if we choose to "vote" down credit as individuals and vote for renunciation of unpayable debts as voters. Personal and political power start with something as simple as paying off a credit card and/or cutting up the card and the debt-serf agreement. "You don't miss what you no longer want," and credit in all forms is something we won't miss once we're no longer willing to wear the shackles of debt-serfdom.

"This guy is THE leading visionary on reality. He routinely discusses things which no one else has talked about, yet, turn out to be quite relevant months later."
--An anonymous comment about CHS posted on another blog.

Thank you, Marie-Claude L. ($10) for your most welcome and generous donation to this site. I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Your readership is greatly appreciated with or without a donation.