Pointing Fingers

The economy is in trouble and everyone is pointing fingers – well, almost everyone. I’ll make an exception for the children who are too young to know and for those who came through the firestorm with a handsome profit as well as those who had the foresight to anticipate the collapse of the markets and are likely to remain relatively unscathed by the troubles that are yet to come.

Find any man or woman on the street and ask, “Who is responsible for this mess?” and you’ll be bound to get an earful of that person’s thoughts and, I might dare add, venom for those whom they strongly feel have mismanaged and upset their hopes and dreams.

The list of the ‘guilty’ is long. The favorites (not in any particular order) include: overpaid top executives asleep at their jobs; unionized labor with guarantees and benefits that make American products un-competitive in the marketplace; the Administration and Congress for allowing the deregulation of the banking industry; the Fed for not raising interest rates early enough or high enough to nip the housing bubble in the butt, the Treasury Secretary for allowing one of the world’s biggest issuers of commercial papers to fail; commodity traders for pushing the world’s oil prices up to unsustainable levels; mortgage brokers for pushing loans to people who can ill afford home ownership; hedge funds and short seller for their bets for or against a company or a trend; corporations that looked only to short term gains and resorted to the mass-relocation of jobs to developing countries to the detriment of the consumer based US economy; and a media that is too tame to challenge the status quo.

There is no doubt that we're in a perfect storm that has been long in the making – all elements contributing to the disaster coming together at the same time while everyone at the wheel was caught sleeping.

What many commentators will fail to acknowledge is that when we point a finger at others, there are three other fingers on that same hand that point back at ourselves. We, as a whole, are equally to blame – we wanted more for less, we wanted the benefits without considering the consequences and, rather naively, we wanted to believe those who tell us that all that is possible.

Whether or not we agree that we are part of the cause, we cannot stand aside or do nothing and say, “Not I” or “Not on my dime”. While that would be a natural reaction, it is a self-centered one – the same type of “Me First” thinking that led us down this hole in the first place.

Knowing we are in a hole and we are in it together is the first step of the twelve step program to recovery. Kicking the addiction to short term gains requires acknowledgment that the habit is self-destructive.

When we next feel the urge to point fingers, we should look in a mirror. Hopefully, the face staring back at us is a wise one – one that has learned enough and has done enough so that pointing fingers won’t be necessary.