The economy stinks. Everyone agrees on that. But it gets interesting when we start talking about who’s to blame. The Democrats, the GOP, Wall Street, greedy CEO’s, Bush, Clinton, Greenspan, mortgage brokers, banks… talk to five different people and you’ll hear five different ‘who’s to blame’ theories. And while everyone we’ve mentioned bears some culpability, the bottom line is this: None of them could have caused this disaster if not for THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC!

When did it become acceptable to sign a mortgage on a house that you could not afford? Yes, slimy mortgage brokers were pushing hard. Yes, banks were (foolishly) issuing these loans. And if it wasn’t for Wall Street’s greed, these mortgages wouldn’t be spread around the world contaminating investments everywhere. But it starts with personal responsibility and ethics.

Growing up, we were bombarded with maxims like “your word is your life” and “don’t borrow money you can’t pay back”. At what point did the American public collectively say “F*ck it, give me that car!”? And what made us think it was ok?

It comes back to our fundamental feeling of entitlement. When we want something, we want it now! And if we can’t afford it now, we take out another credit card. We arrogantly assume that life will keep getting better and that we’ll be able to pay off our debt. It was this same assumption that led investment banks to take on incredible debt in an attempt to maximize profits. It didn’t dawn on them that their investments could fail, leaving them with mountains of debt and few assets. We’re right to criticize their spectacular failure, but we need to acknowledge our own collective failure.

We’re not suggesting that literally everyone is to blame. Most likely the majority of the public has conducted themselves fairly responsibly. But if nothing else, we’ve allowed our culture to embrace instant gratification at the expense of responsible planning.

This isn’t limited to our finances– we’ve embraced instant gratification across the board. We let our kids play hours of Xbox rather than read or exercise. Forget waiting for sex until marriage– even the thought of saving it for a committed relationship is a joke in today’s culture. And why would we bother with a home-cooked meal around the dinner table when we can just pick up McDonald’s and sit in front of the TV? We glorify the wrong things– clothes and cars are not as important as intellect and communication skills, but ask any high school kid which he’d rather possess… 99% of them take the ferrari and the $199 jeans over the intellectual ability. Thanks MTV!

Right now, we’re dealing with the consequences of our financial irresponsibility. But we’ll pay for our neglect of physical responsibility and our neglect of education. When generation X-box grows up and is completely dominated by the international workforce, we’ll wish we had reacted before it was too late.

The good news in all of this is that we’re not dependent on anyone to fix this for us. This stimulus bill may be effective or it may not. But either way, it doesn’t matter unless we embrace personal responsibility at an INDIVIDUAL level. YOU have to fix this. I have to fix this. We need a common-sense renaissance. We need to stop spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need. We need to get our kids off their butts and away from the TV. We need to stop glorifying material substance and start emphasizing education and work ethic.

Or we can sit on our hands and watch the economy continue to crash– to be followed in short order by the collapse of our way of life.