How Often Can You Drop The Ball?
Oct 13 2008
Business is tough and it’s only going to get tougher the next several months and probably years with the economic meltdown happening as I type. Things have been good (actually great) in the United States and it seems that many people (Democrats and Republicans alike – each in their own different ways) started to expect things to be taken care of for them and began to forget that although luck plays a part in finding financial success, that working hard, getting an education, paying attention, making good decisions, not buying what you want but don’t need, not eating unhealthy foods, etc. play a much bigger role.
Members of both political parties took it for granted that the government would take care of them. Not just those on welfare! Some just thought the good times would roll on forever and signed up to risky home loans and bought things on their credit cards they couldn’t afford.
Some decided because they were told (i.e., marketed to) they should own a home as part of living the “American dream,” they should buy a home not worrying about whether times would change and if they could afford it over the long term. And it’s not just high school drop outs who made these decisions, it’s also college educated people, because the American culture of ‘borrow, borrow, borrow and don’t worry about tomorrow‘ has prevailed.
So who dropped the ball? The American consumer? The government? The banks? Parents? Educational Institutions? In my opinion, everyone did. The ball has been repeatedly dropped and instead of being ‘kicked off the team‘ like they would be on any professional sports team or any successful business, they were allowed to continue to drop the ball. And now because the ball was dropped too often, here we are in the US facing one of the worst economic challenges in our history.
My guess is that in the years to come those who repeatedly apologize for dropping the ball, for making mistakes, or not following through (e.g. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve who I couldn’t believe said something like ‘I don’t know, I haven’t had a good track record when it comes to make decisions about the country’s financial position‘ when asked about the $700 billion bailout package. — Yes, I saw him say that on live TV!) will hopefully be weeded out. We can only hope they get weeded out without receiving big financial packages rewarding them for their incompetence.
The US system is broken in many ways but in many ways works better than anywhere in the world! It rewards incompetence but it also rewards talent. It rewards people who work hard but it also rewards people who happen to be at the right place at the right time without the right skills and then doesn’t get rid of them when they don’t perform.
So pay attention. Don’t let that ball drop. If it happens to drop, pick it up quickly and pass it to the next person on your team (and hope he or she doesn’t drop it too often) because our country and our world needs everyone’s help!
Author: Aruni | Filed under: entrepreneurship, politics, random stuff | Tags: American dream, dropping the ball, owning a home, success hard work and education, US government | 4 Comments »
I couldn’t agree with you more about what’s happening with housing. My wife I are educated (MBAs) and thought we were financially secure until we got ourselves into a house that we couldn’t afford. It was so easy to get the loans that we thought it would be easy to pay for. We’re now entering into foreclosure 2 years later.
The silver lining is that we have been forced to live in our means and look at everything we buy as ‘need vs want’. It’s a good lesson; we just learned it the hard way.
Aruni, as you know I think you’re being too hard on the Bernanke/Paulson/Bair team’s reaction to the credit crisis. They have been reacting to unprecedented events, and while they may have made/be making errors, it’s not clear to me those errors were caused by incompetence rather than incomplete information. Here for example is a contrary view: Paulson should get the Congressional Medal of Honor:
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/10/15/mean-street-hank-paulson-national-hero/
But regardless, I am eagerly awaiting your post on what this means for entrepreneurs!
–Isaac
@JD – thanks for dropping by and commenting. Sorry to hear you are going into foreclosure on your home. I’m glad you are able to see the silver lining and sometimes we need to learn things the hard way so we can help others learn the easier way!
@Isaac – yes, I know you think I’m too hard on on those guys. You may heard the saying ‘to those who much has been given, much is expected.’ Personally, I wouldn’t wish the job of President or Chairman of the Fed on anyone because it’s just too darn hard/stressful, but if you want it and get it then I expect them to live up to it. And in my opinion, the American public needs to feel assured that their leaders have a plan and don’t back out of their responsibilities just because they’ve made a few bad decisions. It’s now when the true leaders will (or shall I say need) to emerge…
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