Solving Yesterday’s Problems
March 10th, 2010
One of the peculiar things about the human condition is that we tend to look backward while we are attempting to move forward. When the problem shifts from individuals to organizations and government, the problem becomes much greater in severity and much larger in scale. The fundamental reason why human beings look backward so often when seeking wisdom, is that past experience is something that feels concrete while the future is always murky and unknown.
The inherent danger in this tendency to grasp what we know and scorn what unknowable is that we constantly endeavor to solve yesterday’s problems. This phenomenon plays itself out with government entities that attempt to solve the problems of their last generation while a new crisis begins brewing for the next. It manifests itself in companies that cling to antiquated business models, small businesses run by owners that insist on the ‘old way’ of doing things, and individuals who invest based on what prospered during the last economic expansion while avoiding the assets that were most troubled.
In an era of burgeoning unfunded government entitlement liabilities and looming inflation, the national authorities are currently attempting to generate a health care entitlement while the systematic destruction of the dollar’s purchasing power from monetary expansion and price inflation looms over the national economy like a snowdrift perched in position to unleash a devastating avalanche.
In a market environment where real estate values have collapsed, many people are seeking the security of treasury notes for fear of volatility in values that were experienced in both the stock market and real estate during the last few years. This fear has left many people blind to the risk of severe inflation from monetary expansion by the government. In this attempt to preserve what assets they still Read the rest of this entry »
