If you don’t do your job you cannot do it badly – but you can still fail.

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The IMF announcement of a toxic asset hole of probably $4 Trillion is shocking but not unexpected. Some of us believe that the statement is a ‘warmer’ and that there will be more to come. It is said that worse figures have already been presented in Washington.

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In a climate of anxiety about the future, when whole countries are going bankrupt, it is prudent to reduce non-essential spending to a minimum. In naval terms, ‘batten down the hatches’. But random cuts based on what is easiest to eliminate are not a good idea. While a target reduction in costs is essential the specific items to be cut need to be very carefully considered. How do you decide where to slash?

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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.

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Not as important as your health or your soul, looking after your money is still high on the list of things you want to get right. That is why bankers, finance and fund managers are paid more than most people – more, certainly, than doctors and priests.

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Half the people alive today have never experienced serious inflation. They will shortly. At the end of it, many will have starved to death. Those remaining will live in a very different world from that of the past fifty years. Cheap food, easy personal mobility, considerable leisure time, increasingly high medical standards. All these are going to be severely dented by ‘the enemy within’ – inflation.

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Over the past century the mass media have played a vital role in the dissemination of information about everything from disease to designer handbags. The relatively high standards of living now enjoyed by many in the world would not have arrived – or would have arrived more slowly – if the mass media had not promoted them. Good communication, efficiently and attractively dispensed has enhanced all our lives more than most other technical advances.

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Think that the financial crises encompassing the globe have little to do with you and me? Wrong – we are the people who are paying for them all.

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A man doesn’t dig his garden just because he has a new shovel. Cultivation is for survival or entertainment, not simply to make use of the new toy on the block. And yet how many of us have fallen for the IT hardware and then searched, often unsuccessfully, for its purpose?

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How much of the restructuring we hear about in business is necessary? Certainly not all of it. The building blocks of any organisation are its people. Get them right and the organisation will work.

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