What did we expect?

I've been really nervous the last few weeks. Once talk started centering around "recession" and "bailout" and the Dow started dropping, and dropping -- I got jittery. Things can get pretty hairy around here already without the economy taking a nosedive.

Then I got to thinking. Really thinking. Had we been paying attention we probably could have seen this -- all of this -- coming.

I'm not a prophet by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I an economist. Hell, I didn't even take economics in college (which could explain the state of my own checkbook, but that's another blog post). But I am an adult, I have lived as a married woman and as a single mother and have participated in the free marketplace as both. When I took a sabbatical from writing six years ago and sold real estate, I got to be on the other side of the market and started noticing things I hadn't paid much attention to before.

People who had no business buying houses were buying houses. Banks were authorizing people to spend way more than they could afford, and real estate agents were swaying their clients to the higher end of their authorization. Mortgage rates at that time were at 5 percent and lower, and mortgage lenders began offering 100 percent loans.

I remember telling my business partner at the time that in 5 to 10 years we would start seeing a lot of the houses we were showing and selling -- particularly those to clients who insisted on the 100 percent loan -- back on the market. Right after the bank foreclosed.

Then I started looking around me and seeing what was happening. We -- a collective we, being my friends, neighbors, coworkers, colleagues and people I don't even know -- have this need to be constantly updated. We drive our cars until the loan is paid, then we get a different one. We job-hop until we've tried everything. Our cell phones are exchanged for newer, bigger, more complex models all the time -- and do far more than allow us to just talk to someone in another building or city. We can email, watch television or videos, get news updates sent to us -- all on our phone.

Americans buy because we can. The idea of "needing" something has become so abstract, I'm not sure many people could actually identify a "need" vs. a "want" if asked.

So while it scares the living hell out of me, maybe this mess is a wake-up call we so badly need. Something to say, "Enough. Get back to basics, people. While you still can."