Saturday Morning, Small-Town South

The workload is enormous at OldSouth's international corporate HQ (and if you believe he works from a corner office, then he has such investment opportunities for you!  You see, we buy up all these dodgy mortgages, slice them into teeny-tiny pieces, and sell bonds backed up by all those teeny-tiny pieces. And, if anything goes wrong, the taxpayers make you whole, 100 cents on the dollar....well, never mind....).

No really, Saturday morning, we had to get out of the house, and treat ourselves to breakfast at a little family-owned place in town.  Called the daughter in grad school, to see if she wanted to join us, no answer, oh well. Drove into our little town, past the increasingly vacant little office buildings, the vacant car dealership, the 'for sale' and 'for rent' signs.

We walk in the restaurant, and hear the daughter's voice: 'What are my parents doing here?' Great minds think alike, she's escaped to breakfast with her best friend from high-school,  unemployed by the Great Recession. College education, industrious, attractive, bright sense of humor, papering her world with job applications. Usually, not even an acknowledgment of receipt of the application. Unemployment benefits still running, but of course no heath coverage. Living at home again. Some days, she says, she just doesn't want to leave the house.

Any number of thoughts come to mind.  This young lady is now at least a year now from establishing a separate household for herself, even if she finds a good job next week. Marriage, family not on the horizon, and she's now twenty-five. This does not bode well for real-estate over the next five years or so around here.

She's not untypical, except she has the college degree.

OS is concerned that we are witnessing an entire group of young people slowly becoming marooned.

(Hmm...millions upon millions of jobs saved or created.)