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!

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