The Economic Crisis

So, my favorite economic new source, the NPR Planet Money podcast has been interviewing many experts and laypersons looking for a consensus on where the blame falls for this global economic quagmire in which we find ourselves. Though I certainly understand the real meaning of these segments, namely analyzing the public responses which will dictate public policy and seeking out the root causes of our financial woes so that we might not make the same mistakes again ... at least not for a while. Since they like to strip things down and simplify them, I can see how the segment has taken on the theme of being a blame game. However, I do wonder if this is the most productive outlets for either our despair or our curiosity. See, I recognize that the fault lies within the lack of regulation in Washington, the irresponsibility and short-sightedness of bankers, and in general a lack of realistic expectations and spending habits that spread from government policies to corporations and banks to each individual. But the word blame itself is such a pejorative and suggests that we can find one perpetrator. It suggests that the solution is simpler than I know it to be and suggests the responsibility be pushed off of ourselves and onto those we elected or those banks we were happy to cheer when we saw our retirement accounts each year.

In particular, I avoided trying to get a loan at one point I knew would be a dangerous investment if ever the market turned, thought we were seeing unsustainable growth in the cost of housing and basic transportation, but I never looked deeper into what that meant for finance. Our schools continue to decrease the expectations they have for their graduates while the financial institutions controlling their wealth and well-being use more and more complicated mathematical models and global markets require more mathematical literacy. Still, though I believed such things were a problem, I did not raise my voice or a finger to do something about it, raise awareness, have my questions heard or even understand how deeply our economic growth had come to rely on the housing market alone.

In general, we were all complicit in this culture of greed, which is why we are all suffering the consequences of the fact that much of the wealth accumulated over the past two decades has been relatively artificial. As a result, our own citizens plus the emerging markets and global financial structures our economy supports will suffer for years until we start investing in education, technology and sustainable growth industries that leaves behind a legacy of more than a balance sheet. Finance is an essential part of the global economy and should continue to be so, but in a way that produces genuine growth and develops new jobs and infrastructure that can be used to generate the jobs, materials and technologies of the future.

The nature of being complicit to government policies against your better judgment because you are not directly involved in their implementation and are seeing some benefit is particularly interesting to me given where I am living right now. It seems clear that even the people my age are very aware of the fact that their not so distant relatives were complicit in some way with the consequences of National Socialism and the crimes of their government during that era. There seems to be an unspoken sadness in this realization, but also a knowledge that they themselves would never allow such a thing to take place again without a fight. So, rather than asking how much their grandparents or families are to blame for those crimes, they accept that mistakes were made with dire consequences, swallow their pride and try to move forward with a peaceful, progressive society with the goal of avoiding at all costs the arrogance and mistakes of their ancestors. The past is always acknowledged, the universal blame accepted, but the future has become the focus. It is always important to remember the past, but if you dwell on it, you can stop moving forward.