Sound like today much?

I got this directly from the NY Times…  So I don’t get credit for finding this piece, but in 1933, an American economist by the name of Irving Fisher had this to say…

Banks concerned about their corporate customers’ indebtedness demand debt liquidation, which forces firms to sell off assets at fire-sale prices to pay them back.

Money in circulation declines as banks hoard the dollars, which causes spending to drop and prices to fall, depressing businesses’ net worth and profits and throwing many into bankruptcy.

Production is cut; workers are laid off. This deepens pessimism and leads to more hoarding of money.

This sounds pretty darn familiar.  What do we do now though?  Well, as I see it, we plow ahead.  As a sometimes leader, I keep going.  I tell my friends that they haven’t seen the worst, but that we keep working.  We keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Right now, we might be walking (or even sliding) down a hill, but if we keep putting one foot in front of the other, we’ll be walking up hill soon.  The thing is that we want to actually start on a good foundation though, so we have to stay on our feet all the way to the bottom.

Let us not rebuild on top of a bunch of consumer debt or government handouts.  Let us listen to Obama!

Let us build roads, bridges and infrastructure.  Let us invest in green manufacturing and technology.  Let us invest in schools and vision.  And let us not be afraid of a bit of inflation.

Let us not be afraid to start over!