What are they going to call 2009 – the year of the Payday Loan?

The year when just about everyone got into financial trouble

The earth has been through many ages and eras in its four and a half billion year lifetime, including one relatively short one known as the Payday Loan Age. Some were dramatic, like the Jurassic Age, some were evolutionary like the Ice Age and some were progressive like the Bronze Age. What we are looking for at this moment is a name that will describe the present state of the earth. How about the Depression Age, or the Age of Collapse or the Loan Age?

The Loan Age

Actually, it’s not important what we call it as long as it has no permanent effect, like the Quaternary Age which occurred about 1.8 million years ago and which permanently wiped out many mammals, including the mastodon.

The Loan Age will bring great changes to the order of our world in many areas. Banking and the management of money will be very different as will all things related to finance, marketing, the trading of stocks and many other things we take for granted and which have been in common use for centuries. It is not expected that institutions such as banking will become extinct. They will simply mutate into a different form.

The new operating system

The earth is heading for a complete makeover, a new look, an improved operating system, let’s call it version 2.01. But this will not be another Microsoft Product, rather one that is designed by its users, meaning us. It needs to be built from the ground up, and it has to include every possible variation and alternative that can be thought of. It will be very difficult to come along in 537 years time and say “we are issuing a patch to cover a loophole in the Payday Loan law.”

Lay off the hardware

And here is a warning – be sure the new operating system works with the existing hardware. You cannot force 6 or 7 billion people to change their hardware because it makes the software go quicker or more smoothly. Our hardware is the one we’ve got and this is what we are going to use until the next operating system is issued in another 2 million years or so. And make sure that those who come after us understand that the hardware we leave them has to last until a new operating system is issued.

While we’re at it

We have a request for the designers. In addition to our financial and economic systems being in a mess, we have a problem with water. There just isn’t enough. There was plenty for everyone when the earth’s population was 2 or 3 billion. Now that we are almost at 7 billion, we’re short. Can we somehow increase the quantity we have or can we come up with another substance that we can use instead of water. This will prevent a lot of future wars.

Back to the Loan Age

While the whole world sits and waits for the redesign to happen, we need a Band-Aid solution, one that will stop the flow of blood pouring out of the wounded companies, industries, banks and governments. Can we consider increased size in a Payday Loan?