Time Is Running Out — And the Situation Is Not Normal

Time is running out. To keep the U.S. government from shutting down, a surprisingly arcane series of five to ten legislative actions need to take place between now and Thursday or maybe Friday, and at this point, leaders only think they agree on what to do. In Europe, several large banks will fail and one or two national governments could also be insolvent in the first half of November if a workaround is not implemented beforehand, and political observers say they are not sure there is enough time to work out even the details that are required this week. Oh, I know, we have heard these stories before. But these are not the situations that come up when things are going well. It is the households that get comfortable with living paycheck to paycheck that are almost guaranteed to experience a cash crisis several times a year, and now the same thing is happening globally. Time is running out again — and as familiar as it might have become, this is not a normal situation for the world to be in.