I’ve been flipping through the images of the NYTimes.com’s Picturing the Recession project. Folks from around the world are sending in photographs that show how the recession is playing out in their neck of the woods.
I got to a shot of people waiting in line for a Philadelphia check-cashing shop to open up for the day, and I had a thought I’ve been having more and more of late: How do we tell which parts of the economic hardship we’re witnessing come from the recession and which parts come from deeper currents that transcend this particular downturn? The difference is an important one. If people are lining up at a check-cashing shop in Philadelphia because we’re in the downswing of a business cycle, then the best solution is to do what we can to stimulate GDP. But if people are lining up at a check-cashing shop in Philadelphia because they either can’t or won’t access mainstream financial services—and wind up paying usury interest rates because of it—then we need to be thinking about a different set of solutions. For instance, maybe we should be paying attention to the hearings the House Financial Services subcommittee is having today on how best to regulate the payday lending industry.
It is easy to look out into the world and see people with money problems and slowly shake our heads at how bad the economy is. But that will pass. We’ll have another economic upswing and then the sad can go away. Deeper problems will again be swept under the rug. Unless we take this time to think a little bit about how everything isn’t the economy’s fault. Sometimes it’s society’s fault, too.
Barbara!