A good friend who is moving on from our current mutual employer today shared this with those of us privileged enough to work with him.

Richard Carlson, author of “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff….. and it’s all Small Stuff

Achievements and accomplishments are important, but they can take you only so far. In the end, what really matters – and what people remember you for, and how you value yourself – is all about the type of person you are and the type of role model you become.

This article about our economy makes the most sense to me.

The Third Depression

The Third Depression
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

In 2008 and 2009, it seemed as if we might have learned from history. Unlike their predecessors, who raised interest rates in the face of financial crisis, the current leaders of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank slashed rates and moved to support credit markets. Unlike governments of the past, which tried to balance budgets in the face of a plunging economy, today’s governments allowed deficits to rise. And better policies helped the world avoid complete collapse: the recession brought on by the financial crisis arguably ended last summer.

But future historians will tell us that this wasn’t the end of the third depression, just as the business upturn that began in 1933 wasn’t the end of the Great Depression. After all, unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

As far as rhetoric is concerned, the revival of the old-time religion is most evident in Europe, where officials seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover, up to and including the claim that raising taxes and cutting spending will actually expand the economy, by improving business confidence. As a practical matter, however, America isn’t doing much better. The Fed seems aware of the deflationary risks — but what it proposes to do about these risks is, well, nothing. The Obama administration understands the dangers of premature fiscal austerity — but because Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress won’t authorize additional aid to state governments, that austerity is coming anyway, in the form of budget cuts at the state and local levels.

Why the wrong turn in policy? The hard-liners often invoke the troubles facing Greece and other nations around the edges of Europe to justify their actions. And it’s true that bond investors have turned on governments with intractable deficits. But there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors. On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain, which has been far more reluctant to take the hard-liners’ medicine.

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

This was posted on a discussion forum I frequent recently. If you aren’t familiar with Dr. Emoto’s work, he is the scientist from Japan who has shown how human emotions impact the characteristics of water. It is the best evidence I’ve ever seen of our Source and interconnectedness!

Today at our church we read a letter from Dr. Masaru Emoto who many of you will recognize as the scientist from Japan who has done all the research and publications about the characteristics of water. Among other things, his research revealed that water physically responds to emotions.

Right now, most of us have the predominantly angry emotion when we consider what is happening in the Gulf. And while certainly we are justified in that emotion, we may be of greater assistance to our planet and its life forms, if we sincerely, powerfully and humbly pray the prayer that Dr. Emoto, himself, has proposed.

I am passing this request to people who I believe might be willing to participate in this prayer, to set an intention of love and healing that is so large, so overwhelming that we can perform a miracle in the Gulf of Mexico.

We are not powerless. We are powerful. Our united energy, speaking this prayer daily…multiple times daily….can literally shift the balance of destruction that is happening.

We don’t have to know how……we just have to recognize that the power of love is greater than any power active in the Universe today.

Please join me in oft repeating this healing prayer of Dr. Emoto’s. And feel free to copy and paste this to send it around the planet. Let’s take charge, and do our own clean up!

“I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings. To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, planktons, corals, algae and all living creatures…..I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

Our family has always had pets ….. as in plural.

Matt and I have always been the pet people of our family.

A couple of months ago, Ryan expressed an interest in getting a kitten. I thought it was a phase so I let it go to see if it would pass.

It didn’t.

Yesterday, we brought home the two newest members of our family. Meet Fiona and Roxie.

Both came from South King County Cat Rescue. They are both 11 weeks old, have both been spayed, wormed and have all their shots.

Fiona is the calmer of the two. Her mom is a house cat who had a little of kittens unexpectedly. The kittens were given to the cat rescue and the mom was spayed.

Roxie is a little adventurer. Her mom was a feral cat who was trapped and spayed once she gave birth to her litter. Roxie is a purring machine and loves to explore.

Ryan is quite lucky to have found such a cute pair of kittens. And he’s really opened up with these two kittens. I’m so proud of him.