How secure is a home equity loan if the value of the house is dropping?  As consumers most of us can't get away with the games that the so called experts in the financial industry can get away with.  And sadly we are all paying for their foolhardy ways.  But how did it come about?  We trusted them to know what they were doing.  Why?  We wanted short term gains as well - the quick road to riches.  We trusted that these folks could do it for us.  And for a while it worked.  But not forever.  Now pension plans are hurting, retirement savings are battered, many are running scared - and making things worse in the stampede to sell.  Those with cash and a bit of fore-sight are making a killing by shopping at bargain basement prices.  Fear is driving those who are afraid further into the very situation they are fearing.  Those who are choosing regardless of their fears are going to come out of this looking like geniuses.  It's like entrepreneurs - they are the ones taking chances and they are the ones who stand a chance of gaining riches.  Those who sit on the sidelines, remain comfortable in their regular jobs may retire comfortably (if there's any money left in their pension plan) but they are not likely to get rich.  Those who invest - in real estate for example, will do far better.  Real estate is one of those things that makes for a good foundation - it has real value to real people.

My previous blog was about creating our own existence through our choices, choice being defined as decisions + actions.  Those decisions and actions don't necessarily have to be made consciously - although that is certainly preferable.  One must ask just how conscious all those choices were in the financial industry.  Did people really know what they were doing or did they really believe that money was that easy?  The pursuit of short term gains can only work for a while.  It is not sustainable - and I'd say that has now been proven very well.  Yet how many companies will still pursue short term profits at the expense of long term sustainability.  Is your company doing this still?  How many of your companies are pulling back on spending, reducing improvement programs, battening down the hatches?  Those are fear based reactions.  They will lead to fear based results.  Now's the time to pull out all the stops and take risks. 

If you are an SMRP member you received the summer issue of "Solutions".  I wrote an article about the decline heavy industry in North America - all because of our pursuit of short term benefit.  How timely. I got my copy in the mail (here in Canada) about a week after the meltdown.  Mail from the US is slow up here, so our members in the USA must have seen it almost simultaneously with the meltdown.  They might have been a bit too preoccupied with their fears about money to read it though.  Now, the news, periodicals, the fliers from investment houses and letters from our brokers are full of stories of how their resident experts forecast what was coming.  It's too bad that so few spoke up before it happened.  Why?

Why did they keep quiet?  I believe it was their fear of being seen to be a bit nuts.  After all the fantasy ride to riches had been going on for a very long time.  Fear kept them quiet.  Fear of not making enough ROI keeps many companies thinking "short term" and ignoring the signs of the train on the tracks headed their way.  Look at Ford and GM and the state they are in.  The signs of that situation were visible for a long time, yet they kept going the same old way.  It's time to wake up folks.

Sustainability requires a different mind set than we've had so far.  Einstein said that you can't solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.  He's right.  We need to shift our thinking and make new choices.  My suggestion is that we shift to long term more conscious perspectives.  And you can perhaps see the reason for the name of my company. 

The mess and blood shed does not need to continue.  But it's up to us to make new choices, different choices.  The "same old, same old" will only beget the same old results.