Terrific MentorsJohn Bittleston, Eliza Quek & Denise Pang – Career, Business and Personal Mentors

Crisis Or Opportunity?

05 Nov 2008

Topics: capitalism, economics, financial, money

American citizens are justly angry at their taxes being used to bail out the reckless and fraudulent money-go-round of the financial system. The badly squeezed middle-class all over the world are already carrying the bulk of the costs since they pay most taxes, support young and old and work nineteen hours a day to produce the incomes on which society depends. In our attempted correction of the damage that has been done we should be supporting not punishing them.

Here’s how to turn adversity into sanity:
What goes down must come up – even if we don’t know when. If the earnings of companies you might invest in are not as susceptible to recession as most shares, buy them. You may have to sit tight for a couple of years but they will come up again.

If your job is threatened – or lost – consider what you’d really like to do. We succeed best when we enjoy what we are doing. A look at your career, past and future, is something you can profitably do now. This may also be a good time to start a business. You will find it difficult to get finance from the bank, but that in itself is a good discipline. If you cannot persuade them to believe in your project ask yourself harder questions before starting.

What is the opportunity for capitalism now? The old model has failed but it wasn’t all bad. It financed the world we live in with its high-tech, high mobility, high quality medicine and high education. Many have benefitted from this. Can we re-stimulate the economic cycle, omitting the faults and making it work better for everyone, not just for the few?

What can we learn from the Grameen Bank? Muhammad Yunus started it to micro-finance the very poor. What about a version of it higher up on the financial ladder to provide capital and loans for new and developing entrepreneurs? Every society needs to encourage its young. There is no reason why governments shouldn’t be involved in this on behalf of their citizens. If you think Governments should not be involved in business study what has just happened in the money markets.

Look beyond public money for this pump priming, too. Business has a life cycle; why should it not finance the early stages of the next cycle? Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) could have no greater aspiration than to see future generations flourish. Why shouldn’t you and I invest, too, perhaps with some modest level of safeguard and guidance?

Above all, why shouldn’t the people who have been hit hardest by the financial scandal determine the regulatory process for the future? If we put discipline back into the hands of the regulators who landed us in the mess they will do so again. Fresh thinkers won’t be perfect but at least they will see the wood for the trees, something the present lot failed to do.

There are pitfalls to be avoided. By merging banks we create an even bigger cartel than we already had. We must prevent the power that is being put into the hands of very few bankers from becoming another weapon of mass destruction.

Regulation must not become so overwhelming that business grinds to a halt. A bank with whom I have banked in credit for over ten years wants me to present myself, my passport and my NRIC in person at their counter to open a new account. No wonder trillions went missing; they were probably stolen while bank managers were examining the dental records of established customers. Let’s not fall straight back into that