A Grande Latte in a Venti Cup

"I'll have a grande latte, but please put it in a venti cup." I wonder what that says. I suppose there could be all kinds of reasons someone would want a bigger cup for their coffee - and for those who aren't in the know, yes, "venti" is larger than "grande" - but I think there's a larger message there.

The woman in front of me at the coffee shop today ordered her coffee in one size, but requested a larger cup. The thought immediately struck me - I wonder if that were emblematic of how our economy got here.

The luxury goods, wrapped up in a sleek package, often holding less that their capacity and certainly more than we should buy. The big white cup, only half full. The huge SUV when an intermediate sedan would have accomplished the trick. The 72" plasma screen. The 3,400 square foot home in that desirable neighborhood for a family of 3...well 4 if you include the dog. The stuff we have bought with our credit line.

Sometimes I wonder about that. It's kind of funny - really. The 1980's were all about the Gordon Gekko "Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good" sort of conspicuous consumption. We saw an explosion of new luxury brands in automobiles. Michael Milken's junk bonds, Carl Ichan and the pillaging of Eastern Airlines, and Ivan Boesky's insider trading. What we saw in the 1990's was recession and an apparent "back to basics" ethic. Which lasted about a week.

We have spent the better part of the last decade rebuilding the monolith of the 1980s - the stock market crested up over 14,000, SUV's proliferated, those tv's and gaming systems and everything else the last few years have brought us. Cheap goods from emerging economies, massive credit card bills, low interest rates, and adjustable mortgages on homes we couldn't otherwise afford. Instead of Boesky, we have Bernie Madoff. The players change, the game doesn't seem to.

It's truly amazing we couldn't see what was coming. How long can you continue to fuel an economy on money that isn't there, funding governments on real estate values that existed simply because credit was artificially easy to get and not because there was any real intrinsic increase in the value of the property, and funding our own personal finances by paying for needless expenses with promises of future payments?

The final death blow - $150 a barrel oil strangled the life out of an already weak economy and soaked up the remaining credit many people had. In retrospect we see the money that had been funding real estate credit saw the problems, and headed to speculate on oil. The golden geese of the economy apparently used their wonder twin powers to take on the form of the rat leaving the ship and the iceberg that eventually did it in. Zan and Jayna would be proud - if only in a Bizzaro Superman sort of way.

Back to the coffee. Interestingly enough, in a month where the unemployment has nationally moved beyond 8% and is expected to top out at over 10% some time next year, we still don't get it. And that worries me. I'm just as much to blame - there I was standing in line, at that purveyor of luxury coffee to witness this woman's order.

As true luxury goods now actually start to feel the pinch, we seem to grasp at the smallest of things that might indicate we're doing well - that conspicuous consumption thing. We still want the appearance that we've got something - carrying that white cup around. Even if it's only half full. Makes one wonder, though, would we bother carrying on that charade if you could see through that coffee cup?