'Splain this to me

Someone with more financial smarts than I have needs to talk me down off a ledge, so to speak.

It sounds like we, the American taxpayers, are bailin' everyone out. Bad home loans, bad student loans, AIG, Lehmann, now possibly Caterpillar. The stock market MAY tank, some say. We MAY face double-digit employment, some say.

(Which scares me. As a tenured prof, my job is pretty secure in normal times provided I don't sleep with a student or some equally monumentally stupid move. But there is such a thing as RIFing, which stands for Reduction In Force - where even tenured folks can be let go if times get bad enough).

So - since it looks like my stock investments may evaporate, my non-vested pension plan may go away, and my credit union is paying me a royal (eye-roll) 1.2% on my savings account in times of 3%+ inflation - what is to say I shouldn't just take a big whack of money out of my accounts and just spend it? Buy lots and lots of canned goods that will last a long time (or something like camp food), buy all the books and yarn and fabric and other supplies that tickle my fancy now, because I might not be able to if the whole system tanks and the bookshops and yarn-sellers shut their doors (or in the event I have no money to spend in the future).

Basically go into pre-disaster mode and stock up on everything necessary (food, TP, advil...) and everything that makes life worth living (books, yarn, dvds of movies I love...) with the thought that I may have to figuratively hole up for, oh, four years or so.

Just generally figure we're waltzing on the deck of the Titanic with a big honkin' iceberg in view, so I might as well get my kicks in now, and plan on standing on a bread line come a year's time. (Or maybe go out and buy a rifle and lessons on how to use it, so I can at least have deer meat to eat).

I've said before that it ticks me off - and worse than ticks me off - that I've spent my life budgeting, and saving up money, and delaying big purchases (especially big "fun" purchases like my dvd player) until I have the money at hand to buy them, and there are rafts of people in this country who spend and spend and spend (I work with some of 'em. Honestly, I'm shocked at the level of credit card debt some people I know claim to have), or investment brokerages who take bad risks, and then go,

"Silly me....I seem not to be able to cover this. I would gladly pay you Tuesday for the hamburger I have just consumed."

(Not unlike a guy I knew once, who "conveniently" had left his wallet in his other pants when we all went out for lunch).

And of course, the Government comes in on its big white gelding to the rescue, and not just swooping up the banks that are gasping like goldfish on the kitchen floor, but offering swoop-ups to everyone and anyone who apparently made a bad credit decision - the sort of bad decision that, if I had made it a few years ago and called my dad for help, he would have kind of groaned and said, "I taught you better than this. You can live on beans and rice for a few months. Suck it up and pay the bills off."

In other words: I feel like I'm gettin' screwed here, so shouldn't I be allowed to have a good time first?

(The other thought that crosses my mind: what if the dollar I don't spend today is worth 25 cents in a few months?)

So someone - please talk me down here. Let me know that it's really truly going to be OK and I'm not going to find my money has disappeared itself somewhere and I just have to redouble my working and halve my fun-spending in the future to make back up what went away.