Personal vs. National Economics, & the funniest solution

Doing well with your personal finances is essential.

You have to understand how money and especially how credit and borrowing work.  A relatively conservative approach is perhaps best for the long term.

Spend less than you earn.

Live within your means.

Saving is a big deal.  

Borrowing for consumables is a loser, always.  

Borrowing for a home is usually safe if the price is reasonable, and if you have a plan for maintaining the value of the property.

If you spend fifty years doing things reasonably, you'll likely end up with enough to help your grandkids through college and fund your retirement as well.  Perhaps.  Maybe.  If you can avoid the pitfalls.  That's the conservative approach.  That's personal economics.  

You can do all of that for a lifetime and have it all go south on you.

It's happened before.  Most recently, the housing bubble floated to the top over a couple of decades.  It was fueled by predatory lending practices in the finance industry, and families lost everything in the process.  Not the crooked banks, the families.  

The finance industry passed the loss off by fraudulent resale of the loan risks, fraudulently classified as A+ when they were knowingly just junk.  The SEC, the FED, the banks, the exchanges, and all the players came out on top, and families took the loss.  Various estimates suggest every man, woman, and child in America lost about $16,000, but that's not true.  Nobody on Wall Street lost a penny.  Not a single employee was indicted, not a single CEO lost his multi-million dollar bonus, and the fines that were paid were paid to the government after being taken out of the pockets of the savers who'd been robbed in the first place.  That's the finance industry given to us by conservative politicians.  Unfettered, minimally regulated, free market animals.  Thanks and a hat tip to the conservative approach to finance.

Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for bankruptcy four times, in 1991, 2004, 2009 and 2014.
Trump Entertainment Resorts's only current property is the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.
The company's former properties include:
Trump Plaza in Atlantic City which was closed in 2014.
Trump 29 in Coachella, California is now the Spotlight 29 Casino.
Trump Casino in Gary, Indiana is now the Majestic Star II.
Trump World's Fair Casino at Trump Plaza was closed in 1999 and demolished in 2000.
Trump Marina (previously Trump Castle) is now the Golden Nugget, Atlantic City.

Oh, and the funniest solution ... proposing Trump as a national leader. Worth perhaps a quarter of what he's publicly claimed, Trump has a trail of bad business behind him that suggests every third decision or so will be troublesome.  Nobody cares when it's just his money on the table, but giving him the leadership position for the nation, now that's funny.