The distant echo of a recession

By JDS/Observer staff writer
EAST SANGERVILLE — Jeff Dunham is a hilarious comedian. The man is known best for his ventriloquist acts with his puppets named Walter, Achmed the Dead Terrorist, Bubba J. and most notably, Peanut.
One of the most notable parts of Dunham’s acts that usually gets a roar out of the crowd is when Peanut waves its hand over its noggin, making the few green hairs on its purple head going flying straight back like it was riding in a convertible as it makes the noise “Nrrrrrow,” like a car whizzing past.
The motion is part of a joke, one that means something is way over your head. It always elicits laughs, and even watching it on YouTube gets me roaring as I hear the high pitched squeal of the absurd-looking green and purple puppet.
Then again, that’s how I felt Monday at the Piscataquis County Economic Development Council’s quarterly meeting. The topic of conversation was Tax Increment Financing (TIFs) for businesses. As soon as Brian Hodges of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development started to speak, I heard an echo in my ears.
Nrrrrrow.
The echo subsided, however, when John Richardson began to speak. Richardson is the commissioner of the DECD in Maine. He didn’t speak about TIFs and how they can be of a benefit to communities in Piscataquis County, but rather about what’s going on in the world today.
“These are historic tough times,” Richardson said of the economy. “I don’t remember feeling this bad in a long, long time.”
Granted a large part of his speech sounded like he was getting ready to run for governor of Maine in a few years, but Richardson’s speech made me think about what’s been going on and one thing seems to come back to me time and time again.
What ever happened to Americans helping themselves out and pulling themselves up by their boot straps?
I know it’s a novel and quaint concept during these tough economic times to think we can just pull ourselves out of this recession on our own, but it’s funny how fickle we can be. For a long time, people were told not to even mutter the “R” word. Just don’t say it. It will bring bad luck on all of us.
But now that it was muttered, it’s led to a cascade of people yelling recession on every cable channel on TV. I’m slowly expecting to hear from someone that the world is going to end soon, or that the economy is so far gone that the damages are irreparable.
“It's fallen off a cliff,” Warren Buffett said Monday during a live appearance on cable network CNBC. “Not only has the economy slowed down a lot, but people have really changed their habits like I haven’t seen.”
So the Oracle of Omaha, the man whose company Berkshire Hathaway bought Dexter Shoe in October 1993 for roughly $420 million in Berkshire stock, has officially joined the chorus of talking heads that have told us what we already have known for quite some time: times are tough on Main Street.
Are things as bad as the talking heads say? Yes and no. Yes, people are losing jobs, more are filing for unemployment on a daily basis and Wall Street can’t seem to grow a backbone and trade scared. Businesses struggle to pay the bills and have to take out loans just to meet payroll at times.
But there is a positive to all this, something missing from all the doom and gloom that has come from all this. For my generation, Generation Y or the iGeneration as I think we’ve become known as, this is the first time we’ve been forced to look long and hard at our economic viability.
Many of us in the generation entered adulthood when our economy was on its way up, or at its peak. Money was plentiful, jobs were abundant and many of us grew up as impulse buyers, purchasing useless junk just to appease our need for new stuff.
Unfortunately, it was hard to learn about the economic lessons of savings and credit when everyone was enjoying the fruits of a stock market boom.
Well, that boom has long since gone bust, and that has forced many Gen Y’ers to learn how to deal with a personal savings the hard way: save it or lose it. It’s hard to break that trend of buying things for the simple fact to feel better.
And now we are all left wondering, what’s next? Mainers have a lot going for them. The people in this area have an incredible work ethic and a desire to do well in life. It’s hard to struggle for a long time when you have those two things going for you.
Richardson pointed out that, “When we (in Maine) have a chance to compete, we do well. It’s the chance to compete that sometimes eludes us.”
So, as our economy still struggles to regain its footing and jobs seem to be as sparse as deer in the woods lately, there is still a desire for good work and good jobs in this area. I hear TIFs can help bring in those good jobs. At least that’s what I got out of the meeting Monday night.
Here’s hoping that’s the case, otherwise that roar you hear and the feeling you get when the wind is blowing your hair back is the sound of another opportunity lost in this area.
And no one wants to be hearing “Nrrrrrow” at a time like this unless Jeff Dunham is on TV again.