The Great Reset

Perhaps it is time to consider how much lemonade we can make from the enormous lemon that is our current economy. As bad as things are there are opportunities to emerge wiser and with a more sensible, sustainable future.

What have we learned? We learned that home values cannot go up indefinitely and that bubbles do burst. We learned that we cannot borrow indefinitely to finance profligate life styles. We learned that financial instruments can be made so complex that risk cannot be assessed. We learned that the financial geniuses who created and rated these instruments didn’t understand what they were doing. We learned that companies who offer credit cannot be counted on to have our best financial interests in mind. We learned that companies can be too big to fail. We learned that regulation and oversight is needed and that regulatory agencies cannot be lapdogs of those they are supposed to oversee. We learned what future energy costs look like when demand threatens to outstrip supply. We learned how quickly global demand collapses when interlinked economies suffer from poor policies.

As a country we tend to have a short memory and do not apply the lessons we’ve learned. We will emerge wiser and stronger IF: If we take responsibility for our finances and do not borrow more than we can afford; If we honestly assess what represents affordability in our own situation and ask for help as needed from someone who represents our interests; If we shun credit offered at usurious interest rates and do not finance day to day living; If we insist on regulation that protects people’s interests and that our regulatory agencies be held accountable for proper enforcement; If we invent and adopt technologies to reduce our energy consumption and create alternative energy sources; If we invest in and restructure our educational system so that the U.S. will create these breakthroughs and benefit from them economically and environmentally as they are deployed throughout the world.

If we have learned to live within our means economically and environmentally then we will emerge stronger and more secure as we will be significantly less dependent on other countries to supply our energy and finance our debt.