The economy is showing signs of life, or at least signs of slowing its decline and coming out of the greed induced coma it entered last year. The New York Times reported this morning that “As a technical matter, most economists believe that the United States has escaped the grip of recession, the longest since the Great Depression”. These “vibrations” of recovery are good news for an economy that up until recently was described by many economists as in “free fall”. But this is also being described thus far as a “jobless recovery” and many many Americans have a long way to go before feeling its effects on them personally in the form of a good job and a recovered lifestyle. I am NOT an economist. I am a business owner and entrepreneur with some observations about the near to mid-term future of our economy that I would like to share:
1. WHERE WE ARE was caused in part by over-deregulation of the financial system and the naive belief that a system run by humans will be self-regulating.
2. WHERE WE ARE GOING will result in over-regulation in the interest of economic recovery and protecting the consumer. Mr. President and Congress, this must be a balanced approach that protects the system from human greed and consumer vulnerability, but does not stifle a free market economy and entrepreneurship.
3. THIS WILL BE A GENERATIONAL SHIFT in our economy and our way of life. U.S. domestic policy spent 75 years creating a robust but protectionist economy based on inflated incomes and easy credit. U.S. foreign policy spent the last 25 years creating a world economy that we now are not prepared to compete in.
4. WE WILL PERSEVERE. The spirit of entrepreneurship may have never been stronger in this country since the 19th century. It matters not that some is out of necessity. We have to be out of our comfort zones in order now create a sustainable economy for the next seven generations.
