Up & Coming Weekly

6 UCW DECEMBER 9-15, 2009 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM NOW NOW OPEN OPEN NOW NOW OPEN OPEN Where the Smart Shoppers Go! Where the Smart Shoppers Go! Where the Smart Shoppers Go! Where the Smart Shoppers Go! Children's Resale Boutique Coffman Commons • 4251 Legion Rd., Suite 115 • Hope Mills • 424-2900 Coffman Commons • 4251 Legion Rd., Suite 115 • Hope Mills • 424-2900 Kidz City CLOTHING MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com. Upside Down Decade by MARGARET DICKSON The Dicksons subscribe to way too many magazines. Our mailbox bulges with all sorts of publications, some of which seem to come without anyone ordering them. There are news mags, fashion sheets, sporting reports, magazines with stories and commentaries, business and government tracts, home and decorating magazines, even one or two local publications. All of this, of course, is in addition to the catalogues and sales fl yers that are stuffed into all our mailboxes in hopes we might get into our cars, drive somewhere, and actually purchase something. The Dicksons get so much, in fact, that often I am not able to even glance through much of it, much less sit down and read through an entire publication. It takes a really interesting cover or headline to catch my attention. Occasionally, some do, though, and recent issues of both Newsweek and Time not only grabbed my eye but got me thinking as well. Newsweek's cover sports a photograph of the United State Capitol building turned upside down, accompanied by the headline, "How Great Powers Fall: Steep Debt, Slow Growth and High Spending Kill Empires — and America Could Be Next." With 2010 bearing down upon us, Time's cover presents a diapered baby, sitting on the fl oor in a party hat and surrounded by holiday detritus— Christmas tree balls, a champagne bottle and confetti — wailing his little heart out. Its headline reads, "The Decade From Hell." I admit to a perverse fascination with both of these cover stories. Time's article was particularly unsettling. It focuses on the fi nancial situation in the United States and how that relates to the rest of the world. We in America continue to spend ourselves silly. Our personal spending may have declined dramatically during this Great Recession —the Dicksons' surely has, but nationally we roll merrily along, funding what we have come to call "entitlements" like Medicare on the one hand and talking about cutting taxes on the other. In the meantime, our federal defi cit is the highest in 60 years and rising, with the People's Republic of China, whose economy is going gangbusters, holding an uncomfortable 13 percent of our federal bonds and notes. Time points out, and rightly so that other countries face similar or more dire fi nancial issues, but the fi nancial health of no other nation has such potential impact on the rest of the world. The article ends with a recounting of the demise of several great empires — Hapsburg Spain, pre-revolutionary France, the Ottomans and the British. All washed away in seas of debt. Newsweek was only a tad more cheerful. Its cover baby wails for many reasons, which Newsweek recounts year by year. No conversation is required about the confl agration of Sept. 11, 2001, but the magazine does remind us of the decade's other wrenching events. Here are some of them: In 2000, our nation suffered through an unresolved presidential election which was ultimately decided by a divided U.S. Supreme Court. In 2001, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history was fi led, Enron. In 2002, Americans were introduced to colored coded danger threats, and the Pope and the Vatican acknowledge sexual abuse by priests. In 2003, seven people died when the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated in midair, and President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. In 2004, a tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in Southeast Asia, and the U.S. death toll in Iraq passed 1,000. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas, and U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted for election law violations. In 2006, a man killed fi ve girls at an Amish school in Pennsylvania and then himself, and Saddam Hussein was executed by a hangman. In 2007, a Virginia Tech student shot down 32 people, then himself, and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke said our economy would get worse. In 2008, both the Dow and Standard & Poors dropped by more than 33 percent, their worst performance since the 1930s, and Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. In 2009, both General Motors and Chrysler declared bankruptcy, the national unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent. This is a litany of mostly bad news to be sure, but I do not see the clarion of doom that some people do. I see instead the only certainty of life, which is change. Ours is a mature nation and a mature economy, while others in the world are developing. The balances among the United States and the rest of the world can only change as both we and others evolve. And, change, as we all know, is not necessarily bad. Next week, though, I am planning to read my son's deep sea fi shing magazine fi rst. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET

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