A co-worker forwarded me an email that makes so much sense I have no choice but to post it. The following list of lessons comes from Umair Haque via twitter. Dear Congress, dear Mr. President. Stop everything you are doing and read these. They are short enough to fit into your schedule, and simple enough to understand.
- The first lesson is: when you don’t reinvent institutions at a time of systemic failure, the problem doesn’t just magically disappear.
- The second lesson is: when you prop up the institutions causing the crisis, instead of reinventing them, the crisis will deepen.
- The third lesson is: when dysfunctional institutions prop one another up, prosperity’s a house of cards. Crisis becomes stagnation.
- The fourth lesson is: when propping up failed institutions has drained your resources, you’ve turned a crisis into a catastrophe.
- The fifth lesson is: the longer it takes you to see a crisis for what it truly is, the disproportionately worse it’s likely to get.
- The sixth lesson is: when people who are prisoners of the paradigm that caused the crisis are in charge of fixing it, bet on… more crisis.
President Obama (I can say that now that it is official) is warning America that we need to support his $750B bailout. Specifically, he warned that failure to take “dramatic action” on the package as soon as possible would have devastating long-term consequences for America.
Funny thing, Hank Paulson said four short months ago about the proposed $700B bailout, “I am convinced this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative — a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion.”
This after taxpayers were asked to fund Bear Stearns, Fannie Mac, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, $150B for the original “economic stimulus” and the big three auto makers. What reason do Americans have to believe or even listen to Obama for this time? More of the same, second verse, same as the first. Given our government more money is like giving a debt-ridden spendaholic a brand new credit card. When will this insanity stop?
