My New Blog

As we begin a brand new year, we are filled with hope that it will be a much better one.  Almost like "history repeating itself," our new President-elect has inherited a crisis of historic proportions.  The devastating losses on Wall Street, an economy frozen by uncertainty and massive layoffs, a government stretching to meet its obligations, and the precarious state of millions of families who have lost their life savings or their homes are all "repeats" of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced in 1933 as he began his new Presidency.  But his famous quote was, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

As in the former economic crisis, we will need to restore faith in the market and in our market-driven economy.  As in the 1930's, we will need to have more regulation and self-regulation.  That means we will have to develop a new mindset, like during the depression, that makes us live within our means and learn to do without instant gratification.  We will need to learn contentment with what we already have.  We will have to use restraint in compulsive spending and in giving in too easily to our children.  To relieve the fear that holds the economy hostage, we must restrain the debt, which is the toxin that feeds the fear! 

In these new beginnings, we must realize that, more than ever before, we are interdependent on each other; we can not merely take but we must give as well.  Our new President and the Congress cannot do it alone.  We are all in this mess together, and it will take all of us to get out of it. 

Roosevelt buried his "beast" not by bailing out the banks themselves but by creating new protections for their customers - by restoring widespread confidence.  With a new year upon us, and a new President about to take office, we can look forward to new beginnings with confidence that our wonderful country recovered once before, and it will again. 

Have a Very HAPPY NEW YEAR and wonderful NEW BEGINNINGS!