From the average’s citizen’s standpoint, the reasons for the turmoil in the financial world look murky. But they all seem to have to do with too much debt.

The country is too much in debt because it borrows and spends more than it takes in. The country also buys too much from overseas, on credit apparently, and doesn’t sell enough there. On the individual level, borrowing is encouraged by frequent offers in the mail, even from people who want to lend you money against the value of your house so that, in the words of the offers, you can do the things you want to do, like taking a vacation.

Does one have to be an old-line Calvinist to understand that borrowing against your house in order to spend a couple of weeks sizzling in the Mexican sun is so reckless as to be almost a sin?

If history is any guide, America will get through this economic shakedown just as it has done before. But if there’s a lesson to be learned for everybody, from hedge funds and their managers to the family working hard to get by, it’s to avoid incurring debt as much as ever we can. If that means a more modest life, personally and as a country, what would be wrong with that? (hh)