Concerning the Economic Downturn

I have a busy week ahead of me so blogging will probably be down...or up if I'm really opposed to doing my stuff. Anyway...

My internet homepage is MSN and I've been surprised at the number of stories in the financial section talking about the hit that the porn industry has been taking. Sales are down for the porn peddlers because times are tough for people. Just last week there was a story about how Playboy is open to discussion about someone coming in and purchasing the company. When all the federal money was being handed out for the automakers, Larry Flint of Hustler was among some of the people lobbying to get some government financing.

And then in the last couple weeks a lot of the finance blogs that I've been reading have been posting more on frugality than on investing - living within our means, that sort of thing. Over on Get Rich Slowly, the blog author has a story about the enduring habits the Japanese people developed as a result of their decade long downturn in the 1990s.

I know this could sound crazy to some people, but do you ever think that maybe Heavenly Father anticipated the current condition of the world and uses these slowdowns to get us recentered? When you read the Book of Mormon there is story upon story about how the people became prideful and drifted from the gospel when they were prosperous, but then returned again when they were forced to be humble. I wonder what the modern day scriptures would say about the world today and the hand that God has been playing to get us to remember him.

Want to hear something kind of pathetic about Hugh Hefner? I read a book a few years ago about the efforts that the porn industry was making to capture attention of boys and teens. There were a number of stories about Hef, but the saddest one I heard was about how many people speculate that he never got over his first wife. I'll bet that his spiral into the field is largely a result of his own misguided attempts at trying to fill the emptiness in his life. Apparently his sensitivity is so eroded that he cannot climax outside of the influence of narcotics. Can you imagine that kind of depravity in a human being? And this is the same person that so many men worship.