Resolving Our Financial Crisis
March 6th, 2010 |
As the U.S. economy flounders, the only solution offered is to bail - bail more, bail faster. Yet our bailing effort adds ballast to the sinking ship. By piling on debt we are racing to the bottom. Nothing good is going to happen when we hit the rocks.
While we deride Friedman’s monetary policy and look to Keynesian fiscal policy for answers, we can’t escape the reality - time and circumstances have changed. Old solutions will not work on this new problem.
We mistakenly moved finance from an enabler to a core driver - a mistake that unleashed Wall Street’s greed. The leverage invoked by wanton and reckless financial malfeasance left a wreck with two defining characteristics: a destabilized middle class and a penchant for needless consumption.
Through our desire to reside in more prestigious residences, drive ever more grand SUV’s, and accumulate more impressive toys we have fallen prey to misguided financial policy, counter productive energy policy, and imprudent foreign policy. We have leveraged our future, willingly accepting the reward of trinkets for Manhattan while simultaneously shackling ourselves and future generations into lifetimes of debt service.
Addressing the crisis by plowing more money into the hands of the elite that brought us to this precipice only reinforced previous mistakes. Now instead, we must take stock of current circumstances and address squarely the concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite and a staggering debt. We have undermined trust in what once had been the enabler of global stability - the U.S. economic engine. That engine is fueled by the optimism, innovation, and engagement of ordinary people with extraordinary vision.
Unfortunately, most often, real solutions, those demanding sacrifice, are left until all easy options are exhausted and the wreck rests on rock bottom. We haven’t hit bottom yet, so we likely won’t entertain real solutions soon. Those solutions, in the end however, will come from the people - a top down approach in our current political environment will not work.
In the wake of this financial crisis we have come to see the values we espouse have little connection to the system we support. Economic nepotism must be laid to rest. We must embrace a system whereby the moneyed elite and the masses act together in a collective self-interest based on universal, enduring principles. Our society can no longer celebrate wealth for wealth’s sake nor succumb to the empty promises of material excess. We must come to recognize and embrace ideals more appealing than appearances and more enduring then accumulation.
Overcoming the greatest challenge of our time, demands we overcome the greatest challenge of all time - the double-edged sword of human nature: fear and hubris. The collapsing of the debt bubble highlights the weakness of human nature. Admitting we have a problem is the fist step to fixing it.
Though we have strayed into believing accumulating is our highest purpose, this crisis may yet cause us to see a greater truth. We, all of us, are here to experience, to grow, to learn, to connect, to love. The stuff we accumulate does not endure. For in the end, it is the people we become and the love we share that matters. Bailing is not the way out. A coming together and a commitment to one another is.
Copyright (c) 2010 Scott F Paradis
Scott F. Paradis, author of “Promise and Potential: A Life of Wisdom, Courage, Strength and Will” http://www.promiseandpotential.com publishes “Insights” and a free weekly ezine, “Money, Power and the True Path to Prosperity”. Subscribe now at: http://www.c-achieve.com
