The new billion dollar rescue package misses the entire point. This problem in society – the reason why we need a billion dollar rescue package – is because we refuse to take the blame. Instead of seeing our own mistakes in spending and learning from them, people see this problem as something bad that “just happened.” However, not everything in the economy can be attributed to an individual’s fault. For example, it is not the fault of an individual if he is now one of the many standing in the unemployment line due to job cuts. But we cannot ignore the problem in individual spending for those of us who are guilty. To borrow a line from Lily Allen’s song, The Fear, she sings “I am a weapon of massive consumption. It’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function.” This line sounds more and more like the attitude of the American public that led us to this mess in the first place.

While I did not attend the Spring 2009 Career Fair, much of the discussion about this event has left students bewildered and underwhelmed. The COC website reports that the number of employers at this semester’s event was a 15% decrease from only a year ago. The event only brought in 17 new companies but there were many Fortune 500 companies represented there. While past statistics report that the Spring Career Fair has always been less of a draw than the Fall event, many students now really believe in the word “recession.”