Thanks, Nancy!

Each Sunday, Tim and I enjoy eating brunch and watching This Week on ABC. It is a Sunday morning ritual that I have been doing since I was 11-years-old and the title of the program was This Week With David Brinkley.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi was interviewed about her views on the economy. If you click on the link and go about 45 seconds into the clip, you'll hear her say something to the effect of, "President Bush is finally coming around to recognize what any homemaker in this country could have told you several months ago."

Setting aside the debate of the state of the economy and what can or should be done about it, I want to point out how refreshing it was to hear the term "homemaker" being used in a positive and respectful tone--by one of the most powerful working women in the U.S. no less. We homemakers are typically a quiet bunch, tending to the cares and needs of our families and immediate communities. We don't practice microeconomics...we practice nanoeconomics.

For example, I can tell you without referring to reciepts or my price book that milk has increased from $3 to $4.25 per gallon in the past year. Bananas have gone from .29 to .49 per pound. Bread has gone up apporximately 25% as have eggs. These increases mean a few extra dollars go out of our grocery envelope each trip to the store. While that may not seem like a huge difference, just think about how loudly folks wail when gas prices go up .20 a gallon. Little increases on products that you use every day make a big dent in the family budget. If we are feeling the pinch, I can only imagine how tight things are getting for poor and working class families who have even less wiggle room in their finances.

So when politicians and lawmakers are debating about what to do (if anything) about the economy, I just simply ask that they take a step away from the big numbers (GDP, price of a barrel of oil, etc.) for a moment and tap into our country's nanoeconomic barometer: homemakers.