We are experiencing nothing less than an economic train wreck. The financial express has reached the end of the line – the real economy, the freight cars, are cabled to the sleek engine impaling itself on its fated destination. We have nothing to do but hunker down, hold on tight, and dodge the debris.
We have made a gargantuan bet. We have placed all our chips in and have pulled the entire world into our game. We have made a grave error. This error has far reaching consequences for ourselves, our nation, and our world. The most powerful nation on the earth has wagered its future and squandered its inheritance on the illusion of finance as the basis for an economy.
We can blame the unscrupulous financial titans and captains of industry, we can blame an inept government, but in the final analysis – the buck stops (pun intended) here. We are to blame for participating in, fueling, leading and in short order allowing the nation to jump on the consumption bandwagon. We have been so giddy pursuing wealth or frittering it away we have disregarded the storied wisdom of thrift, industry, and innovation. Now that the train is wrecking – the engine is a molten mass of metal, the lead cars aflame, the tracks shattered – the rest of the economy is fast approaching the point of reckoning to obliterate itself where unbridled excess comes home to roost.
The fool’s errand of betting future prosperity on the engine of finance is twofold. First, money is not real. Money is a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. Money has become our means, our measure, our standard and yes – our obsession. Betting the health and vitality of an economy on the manipulation, control and transfer of an intangible, is folly. Second, by unleashing every means to fuel the flames of finance’ meteoric rise to dominance we unwittingly unchained the greed and corruption of human nature. We have determined, “money is power” and there is no more tempting an elixir than power. Every ounce of leverage the financiers and government officials have managed to employ over the last forty years is now working against us.
Though founded on the principles of liberty and justice for all, the United States has gone astray. We have succumbed to the fallacious notion that markets ought to be free even unconstrained by conscience. This lie proliferates with the tacit dismissal of the other key component of freedom – responsibility. Responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin. In polite society one cannot exist without the other. We dismiss responsibility at our own peril. Unrestrained freedom is a sure road to ruin. By wagering on and then building systems to ensure finance became the dominant force in the American, and global, economy we committed ourselves to experience the wreck now unfolding.
As with every crisis this financial train wreck has within it the seeds of opportunity. This opportunity goes far beyond our financial wellbeing. The opportunity lies in reassessing our purpose for being, redefining our quality of life. This train wreck offers us another lease on life. We can change direction, chart a new course, seize a new opportunity, usher in a new birth of freedom.
We have lost the American ideal and shattered the American dream – yet the true strength of this nation is the resiliency of its population. America was built by people who assumed responsibility for their actions, took risks, and ingeniously applied their energy and effort to the hope of securing a good life for themselves and their posterity. It has taken us some forty plus years to accelerate to this point on the tracks, but all is never lost. To resolve this mess we must act and act wisely.
This is clearly a situation of our making, requiring a solution we must engineer. We can choose a path of self-righteous indignation. We can condemn Wall Street greed and incompetent government oversight and placate ourselves by placing blame clearly in others’ hands. Choosing to assign blame however, relegates us to the role of powerless victims in a painful, all consuming drama. We will cry for help and sit with arms outstretched, waiting for the benevolent charity of people with power, those charged with managing our pathetic lives – the wealthy elite and government officials who cannot even identify the problem. Or we can choose to accept responsibility for the mess we have created – the financial train wreck – and begin to right a wrong. Only in this way can we redeem ourselves. Choose!
Copyright (c) 2010 Scott F Paradis
