Retro-economy

Now a facebook friend of mine asks if we think it irresponsible to abandon her job and everything else and take a year off to travel the world (or whatever else). The verdict was resoundingly . . . "Go for it!" But one of the comments touched me particularly:

"If you find . . . create a coop somewhere for us let me know and I am in!!!"

Now, notwithstanding three exclamation points where zero would do better, this is the kind of sentiment I like to see. Essentially, my theory is that as a society we are turning away from acquisition and to sustainability as our value set. And part of sustainability means more people growing more of their own foods. And eating more of stuff that they can grow, rather than buying it at McDonald's. Or even Kroger's.

For a few years now, I have dreamed of a business putting Americans back on the farm -- designing collectives that work for people across a broad range of demographics and targeting specifically the big American demographic -- aging baby boomers. Instead of a retirement where they can continue unabated the same (disatisfying) lifestyle they have been living for the past 35 years, let's put the boomers back on the farms and let them build a "Little House on the Prarie" lifestyle for their golden years.

Essentially, I wish I had the resources to buy a 160 acre farm, cut it in 10-15 separate plots, set up a community of farmers who share ideas, responsibilities and produce and move some urban families out into rural America.

Leave the debt cycle behind and get reconnected to the earth's cycles.

Doing Busy-ness?

Well today the markets seemed cheery about Treasury's new plan to save the banking system even if Paul Krugman didn't. However, I don't want to talk about markets, banking or new plans today. Well, maybe I want to talk about my new plan.

My new plan is to create, develop, find and enjoy a life that entails less busyness even if that means less money, less affluence and temporary discomforts along the road. Now that I am over 50, I finally understand what Socrates meant when he instructed the young men in the marketplace that the true value we ought to all be chasing is leisure. Now I am seeing that endless cycles of debt, student loan payments become car payments become mortgage payments and then all of those on top of one another are dehumanizing and debilitating. How much is enough? Don't I have enough stuff already?

I have a lot of confidence that I could easily transition to a much more relaxed and comfortable (for me) lifestyle and I have a feeling that it is coming, regardless of what I think.

Adding and Subtracting

Hendrik Hertzberg offers a compelling discussion of tax policy in this week's New Yorker. He makes the case that the time has passed for our most regressive federal tax -- the payroll tax. In fact, he argues, why are we taxing jobs at all? Don't we, as a society, want people to work and other people to put people to work? If we do, then why penalize both classes through the payroll tax?

Well, that reminds me of a story. A new and young husband caught his wife cutting off the end of the Easter ham before baking it and, feeling brave, he asked her why she did that. "Because my mother always did." So on Thanksgiving, he remembered Easter and asked his mother-in-law why she always cut off the end of the Easter ham before baking it. "Because my mother always did." On Christmas, Grandma showed up and by now the whole clan was bubbling with curiosity. The question was put to Grandma, "Why do you always cut off the end of the Easter ham before baking it?" She replied,"What? Oh, I used to do that years ago because my baking pan was too small, but then I got a bigger pan and I don't do it anymore."

Social Security and Medicare were originally funded by payroll taxes and sold to the wary public as a sort of "insurance" program. Thus, if you wanted to draw out, you had to pay in. Benefits were also tied to contributions, not just need. But from the beginning these programs were never insurance and the taxes collected have, for all practical purposes, been treated as general revenues for the government to raid during demographically booming years (the 90s) and creating a big fat looming issue coming due in about 15-20 years or so as baby boomers move out of their peak earning years and into retirement.

The payroll tax is a tax on everyone who works (regardless of income level, except that it actually phases out for high earners) and on everyone who employs anyone who works. As such, it is both the most regressive and most counterproductive tax that I can conceive of. We hit everyone except the rich with this tax and we hit everyone who wants to put people to work with this tax. Talk about bad policy.

Nonetheless, Social Security and Medicare are not going away anytime soon, nor should they. Hertzberg makes the very sound suggestion that these programs be funded not by taxing socially useful activity like work, but by taxing socially undesireable products and activity like dirty energy or using dirty energy especially in a wasteful manner. This is a great idea that needs to be taken even further.

The new healthcare plan should be funded by a tax on unhealthy foods like ice cream, cheese, fried potatos, etc. Schools should be funded by a tax on inefficient housing (huge, single family, energy leaking McMansions, for example). Police departments could be funded by taxes on alcohol and firearms. Police budgets could be slashed and additional revenues raised by taking a more liberal approach to legalizing recreational drugs, subject to heavy taxation and regulation.

In short, there are a lot of things that as a society we find socially undesireable but we are willing to allow people to choose to do. Let's fund the safety net programs we need by allowing, but discouraging these activities.

Staying in the Near Now

Now that we have discussed downsizing and belt-tightening and overhead reduction, ad naseum, we can get to the real center of financial (and every other kind of) security -- the present moment and its environs. Living in the near now, even while temporarily underutilized, it is possible to feel entirely safe and secure. Most of us have enough resources to get to the end of the day, or even the week, and possibly the month, with excess left over. It's when we start to look at the six month, or three year, plan that we manage to cause ourselves anxiety.

As to those three year plans, do the numbers 70, 130 or 50 mean anything to you? Those are the approximate prices of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Bear Stearns & Co. and Merrill Lynch respectively approximately three years ago today. Nice, sound, safe, secure companies one and all back in 2006. Three years later? Devastated, all of them.

We have to reel our focus in and concentrate on the present moment. Build a better today and tomorrow will take care of itself. Focus on what makes you feel happy, or safe, or excited, or useful, or any other good feeling that you seek today and you will be building a tomorrow that will be full of the same. Similarly, press your nose to the grindstone, tough it out, show some guts, no pain no gain today and you will be building a tomorrow that is full of the same. Your choice.

Now I know that a lot of the American (and derivatively the world) economy is built upon a more, bigger, newer, faster premise, but I'm going to suggest that the time has come for national down-sizing. Let's get more out of less ... or if we can't do that, let's settle for less out of less. Less financial stress and strain means more quality of life -- more time in the garden, or on the bike path, or taking a walk, meeting your neighbors, riding the bus, becoming a part of a community and not just someone who quickly races from the car to the house before anyone can talk at us.

The simple life is likely the better life so why not choose it? Or for some of us, why not allow it to choose us?

Re-creating Ourselves

Yesterday I heard from yet another professional previously employed in the sector formerly known as finance. The story was again tragic and at the same time in an outside the box thinking sort of way hopeful. We went through old names from rolodexes long discarded (does anyone even know what a rolodex used to be any more?). Name after name from entire institutions long since gone up in smoke.

Whole rolodexes, once the prized resource of the on the move finance professional, rendered entirely worthless. The world of finance as we once knew it gone.

Now it seems as if we have no choice but to re-create ourselves. Being a finance professional is no longer an option for about 50,000 of us as the sector has shrunk by approximately that many jobs in the last year. So what do we do?

Some of us will pick over the carcasses of institutions like Bear Stearns, Lehman and AIG to see if there is any remaining value there. But many more of us will launch out into totally new and hopefully creative and fulfilling directions. Many of us are about to discover the joy of life without the monster mortgage, without the four figure per month auto expense, without the private school tuition bills for the children. Many of us will be returning to the simpler life of the last century.

Is a slower, less frantic, easier and simpler, if somewhat less monetized, life all that bad? Well we are about to find out. Let's hope not.

Is it over?

As of this evening the S&P 500 has closed up for three consecutive sessions. There was no real blow off capitulation sale, but the market did drop with dizzying speed falling nearly 40% in just three months between the Obama election and the beginning of this week. As usual the CEOs blame the drop on short selling, and in this case it seems they may have a point. These explosive rallies off of intermediate bottoms certainly bear all the signs of short covering rallies.

Of course, it's impossible to tell what is really going on in the stock market even in the best of times, let alone today, when our entire economy appears to be undergoing a major transformative process. For the past . . . perhaps one should say 75 years, definitely one could say 6 years, a pretty strong argument could be made for 30 years . . . for the past whatever the relevant period, the American economy has grown primarily by growing the outstanding debt.

In recent years (whatever the appropriate time frame) the expansion in debt has come at least in part through an expansion in available debt products that reached deeper and deeper down the credit quality scale to less and less credit worthy borrowers. But recall that in the subprime housing market at its peak (2006) loans were being made to borrowers with no equity, no positive credit history and no apparent means of repayment. I have no idea how we can go further down the credit scale than that. Credit was so loose that it was cheaper to buy into a house than to rent.

Now credit is contracting and continues to contract. This does not appear to be a formula for growth in the American economy. However, neither the banking system nor the government can survive continued contraction.

Can the government stop the bleeding? Well obviously they could literally just "print money" instead of their current practice of issuing debt to sell and so bring money into existence. Printing money would be a RADICAL departure from past practices, however, and will be used as a last ditch effort, if at all. It is not clear to me that the government can stop the contraction otherwise. They have certainly thrown a lot of weight behind the effort lately. And borrowing has picked up in the last two months -- January and February were the two largest months for bond issuance ever.

Another good sign is that the financials led the recent three day rally, and even more, that Citi led the financials over the last three days (albeit admittedly from pretty beaten down prices). If the market becomes convinced that Citi is going to survive (even thrive as they are promising profits (finally) this quarter), it is probable that a rally will follow -- in both the financials and the general market.

For the financials, a stock market rally becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy and strength in the riskier asset classes begins to unwind the massive losses of the last several quarters and mark to market devours the bears, perhaps as rapidly and as violently as it did the bulls.

Time will tell, but tonight my schizophrenic gut is pointing optimist.

Taking a Day Off

Every once in a while we need a break. The body, mind and spirit can only take so much stress and strain and then they snap. We all need a vacation every now and then. So that's my advice today . . . Take a vacation.

Not from your job. From worry. Guess what? Our problems aren't going to get any bigger if we just ignore them for a day. I'm not talking about burying your head in the sand forever (although I wouldn't necessarily oppose that idea). I'm talking about playing Ferris Beuller for one day and just forgetting about the bad economy, the zombie banks, the annihilated securitization markets. Just take a day off and play. Play and have fun.

Go to the park, ride your bike, jog at the beach, go horseback riding, catch an afternoon movie matinee, take $20 (no more) to the 99 cent store and spend it all. Play a practical joke on a friend. Surprise your spouse, significant other or self by preparing a meal that costs less than $3 total. Write a story about the most fun you ever had in one day. Go out at night, or early in the morning, when the city streets are deserted. Count how many stars you can see. Notice the phase of the moon.

When you get back home, pick up a novel. If you don't have one, go to your local library and check one out. Maybe even sit in the library for a couple of hours reading it.

Here are some things NOT to do on your day off: Read the newspaper, watch TV, listen to the radio, surf the internet or connect in any way with the real time, real world media. These days, reality sucks. So let's take a one day break from it. And don't plan your life on your day off either. Don't turn some problem or another over and over and over in your mind until your have examined every square millimeter of it.

Try to take one day, just one day, to find all the things you appreciate about life right now and to experience as many of them as possible in this one free 24 hour day off from worry and negativity.

Who knows? You may like it so much that you decide to go on permanent vacation from worry.

Overcapacity

Mass layoffs hit the legal community in the past few months with massive firings announce at virtually every major law firm in the AmLaw100 and some really astounding numbers coming out of firms like Orrick, O'Melveny, Latham, Cadwalader and Holland and Knight and others too numerous to count. Some lawyers are using the crisis (see my post on Not Wasting A Crisis) to start their own firms but it seems clear to me that there is no way that the "down market" is going to be able to absorb all the displaced professionals. Which is worse, losing your cushy job at a big name firm or finding yourself competing for smarmy divorce work with 100s of other former big firm attorneys, not to mention the experts who have been doing it for the last 5 years while you were busy with Indentures and Offering Supplements.

What's an erstwhile big firm attorney to do in a market that is suddenly awash in erstwhile big firm attorneys?

1) Cut your overhead. To beyond the bare bones. Ordinarily I am an optimist, and I am an optimist about you too, but this is no time to be timid. If you can sell your house, sell it. Prepare your student loan lender for some bad news. I hate to say it, but the private schools may be short a few students next term. Vacations?!? Ha ha ha ha. I am not so much focused on day to day expenses (like groceries or Happy Meals) but it is absolutely essential that you get realistic about your own personal credit crisis. Evaluate your debt load and don't be afraid or ashamed to go so far as personal bankruptcy. A laid off attorney in a bad market just isn't going to be able to carry the debt load that he did in better times.

2) Consider alternative fields. Your law degree and your big firm experience are great assets. They are just not liquid assets in today's market. Where demand does exist, health and post-secondary education, and will exist, infrastructure construction, alternative energy and early childhood education, is where you want to be. And not necessarily as a lawyer. Do you have any skills, talents or other resources that can be put to use in these fields, or supporting people who are employed in these fields? Think about all the ways you could support doctors and other health care professionals. Can you start a business that serves colleges or college students? I would suggest that we all start thinking today about services outside the law where our talents will be welcome.

3) Consider alternative locations. A lot of laid off lawyers are where a lot of lawyers are; i.e., in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Charlotte, Chicago, etc. These are the most expensive places in the country to live. (Washington D.C. is up there in both number of lawyers and cost of living, but DC is probably going to be the center of the economic universe and a reasonably good for legal talent, at least in terms of holding a position, for the next few years.) Meanwhile the cost of living in the less go-go economies of the mid-west is emminently reasonable. If you came off the farm to go to Harvard (a la The Paper Chase) and now find yourself dumped by Cadwalader, maybe you could relocate back to the country and set up your own outsourcing operation. With lower overhead, and similar experience you have a competitive advantage and you don't have to move to India to get it.

4) Downsize your expectations. When you think about it, erstwhile big firm lawyers are in the top 5% of the top 1% on the planet economically speaking. A crisis to us looks like a holiday to the vast majority of the planet. I realize that doesn't help you deal with a spouse who was accustomed to your mid six-figure contribution to the annual household budget. Or with a father who always wanted you to follow in the family tradition. But the facts are nobody reading this is going to starve today or sleep outside tonight. Most of us are doing just fine right now. We may have to make some unpleasant choices in the future, perhaps in the near future, but even at that chances are very, very good that we will enjoy basic nutrition and shelter throughout our natural lives. In other words, practice being grateful for what you have. Then build on that to make your live the one you want.

Feeling Good

Some of us have been trained to look everywhere but where the treasure is. For whatever reasons, and I have my own none too flattering suspicions, the adults around us way back then taught us to not only restrain but positively abhor our desires. We were told that desires were evil, to be resisted at all costs, almost to be a sign that anything of worth lay in the exact opposite direction.

Nonsense. Suppose the universe to be created by an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God. Why then would such a being instill in us the almost irresistable urge we call desire? Could it be . . . could it be . . . could it be, not Satan (as the old Dana Carville Church Lady routine went) but that God, the Creator or the structure of the universe set things up so that we desire whatever that ultimate power itself desires? Wouldn't that be the simplest and most straight-forward explanation for desire?

Don't get me wrong, I am as convinced as anyone that reckless pursuit of selfish and short-term gains can be painfully destructive. But that's my point. Most of us don't really enjoy sexual debauchery or rampant intoxication when considered in the light of the inevitable consequences of such behavior. As we gain experience and learn about the inevitable consequences of our pursuit of short term gratification, new and more enlightened desires take their place. We develop an appetite for a calm and undisturbed mind, for example. Or we seek communion with nature or an earnest conversation with a cherished friend.

I also happen to believe that our desire cannot progress to this mature enlightenment except through the path that leads through the pursuit, and perhaps the unbridled pursuit, of those lesser, more fleeting, more immature desires. But even if one accepts that immature desires need restraint and redirection, we need not accept that all desire is rotten.

I submit that our desires are holy and sacred, they are the God-force offering its energy and direction to us, our destiny pulling us forward. As such, the highest honor we can pay when it comes to desire is to follow it. And until my own desires become important to me, more important in fact than my job or my lover or my child, I will be a miserable martyr and everyone around me will notice and no one will want to be around me anyway. And I really don't blame them.

Until I learn to honor, pursue and attain my own desire, I don't have anything to offer anyone else anyway.

Envisioning Peace of Mind

The financial markets are as bad today as ever and yet I seem to be in good spirits, enjoying the blue skies and perfect spring breezes here in Santa Monica. I remember similarly beautiful days when the financial markets were roaring and my mood was dour to say the least. Obviously my mind is capable of going wherever it wants to go, happy or grumpy, regardless of conditions. Is it possible for me the train my mind to consciously go to the states that I desire and consciously avoid the states that I dread?

I think so. I have been working on it lately. I make lists these days, not of things to do or people to call but of all the good things that have happened in the last 24 hours, or everything I can think of that I appreciate, or all the things I am looking forward to. The result? I am a better frame of mind, more often, for longer periods of times.

I also refuse to indulge in worry or anger. Don't get me wrong. I'm not superhuman. Someone waltzes in right at the dramatic finish of the Lakers game and interrupts me and my anger will probably flare up. But I don't indulge in anger. I don't replay the scenario over and over in mind fanning and fixing the anger emotion in my body, mind and soul. I consciously choose to direct my attention elsewhere. And when I can't, I realize that it is not some other person who is hurting me by making me angry, but me that is hurting me by allowing myself to remain angry long after the conditions that sparked my anger have passed. I have finally learned how to give up my greivances and move on. I either address it in the moment or just let it go entirely. No more bearing grudges for me.

Worry is another self-destructive thought pattern. It won't burn your body, mind and soul up quickly like anger. It will just slowly sap your energy, like weeds choking off a garden. It's a complete waste of energy and totally unnecessary. As the saying goes, 90% of the stuff we worry about never happens. And as to the stuff that does . . . well, for me I choose to endure the pain and agony of all these horrible outcomes only once, not 15, 20 or 100 times as I can when I choose to create and replay these scenarios of a bad future over and over again in my mind.

Since worry is just thinking about the future, let's keep that part. Only let's imagine a future in which everything turns out perfectly. Suppose you knew that you would have all the money you needed to do whatever you wanted to . . . tomorrow. What would you do today if that were your assumption? Suppose you knew that a perfect outcome for your life was already being prepackaged for delivery to you and all you had to do to get it was be true to your Self. What would you do today if that were your assumption? Suppose you could train your mind to believe not only that everything is going to be all right, but that everything is all right?

How would you feel and what would you do then?

What are you waiting for?

People, Profit and Service

I am not sure that the depth and breadth of the changes in our economy are sinking in, even at the highest levels. Going back to the Civil War-era the American economy has been unabashedly profit driven. Getting more people to buy more at higher prices was accepted without examination as the main and often sole goal of American business. The profit motive ruled over all and no one was the least bit embarassed about it.

This was a model that worked fairly well, or at least worked, so long as Americans were sold on salvation through consumption. We baby boomers fit right into the model for over five decades as our teen, young marrieds and mid-life consumption habits drove markets in film and music, automobiles, convenience food and stores and, of course, housing. As long as a massive population bulge wants more, more, more, a profit-centered business model is set up for success. With the proliferation of radio and the TV, entertainment became the centerpiece of our home lives and profit-driven consumer product companies paid for advertising that paid for the entertainment.

As the companies reached the limits of their ability to sell products for cash, new and creative ways to provide consumers with access to financing for ever larger purchases had to be invented. An unhealthy finance bubble was launched and tens of thousands of professionals were sucked into service greasing the consumer finance skids. When we reached the limits of our creativity, the finance fueled bubble popped. That is, once we had finally figured out how to make a loan to a person with no equity, no credit history and no proven ability to repay, we had taken credit as far as it could reasonably go. Some say we took it even further than that. Independent of the credit bubble, I believe demographics are lining up against an economy based on spiraling up consumption. A few years ago, my "greatest generation" mother begged me, as Christmas approached, "Please, please, no more gifts." This was not the mandatory "no gifts" routine. This was a person who had just been working on her estate planning contemplating the burden that her lifetime of possessions had become. This was a person who was dreading any further accumulation of stuff.

Since growing the credit markets is, at least for the short term, no longer an option, it seems to me that the whole concept of a growth economy is called into question. Which leads to the question: if companies are no longer to be measured on the basis of how much profit growth they can generate quarter after quarter, how should we evaluate companies?

Let me suggest that our new standard be service. What is your company doing for it's constituencies? How are your customers better off because your company exists? What is your company doing to better the lives of your employees? How are you helping your community? And the beautiful thing about the service mentality is that it applies all the way down the line -- you can measure your company on the level of service, you can measure your executives on the level of service, you can measure your employees on the level of service, you can even measure your kids or your pets on the level of service?

Wouldn't it be great if we were all determined to put more in than we took out? Imagine our society then.

Redployment of Resources

I spent the last 20 or so years working with some of the smartest people I know creating new, spectacular and innovative financial products. And we were good. In the current issue of the New Yorker there is a cutting, but perhaps a little too true, cartoon where the caption reads: "True, a salary cap on Wall Street may limit the talent pool, but, on the other hand, if they get any more talented we'll all be broke." Many of us got sucked into the huge, expanding vortex of real estate finance during those decades. Now we are seeking other outlets for our creativity.

And how creative were we? Well, at the peak, we were able to convince investors that the risk associated with a loan made to a borrower who had no equity, no credit history and no apparent means of repayment was risk that could be managed through creative finance. No single individual can bear the blame for this. As a comedian friend of mine's routine goes: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." And when it comes to real estate loans, it's impossible to make a bad loan in a rising market.

Of course, the days of rising real estate markets covering all sins have been temporarily suspended. Which may be all well and good and in the nature of markets generally for the economists of the world. But leaves the individual finance professional with a difficult puzzle to solve. What do you do with a finance rocket scientist when the space program has been disassembled?

The first thing that seems clear is that Washington not Wall Street will be the stronger influence on the direction of our economy for the next couple of years. Investors are so skittish these days that they are piling en masse into Treasuries and shunning all other opportunities. Yield hogging is passe. Risk avoidance is vogue. With so much money being piled so cheaply into Treasuries of every maturity, the market is actually saying, "We trust government and, pretty much, nobody else with our money."

Well, what is the government going to do with all that money that everyone wants to lend them? Actually, that's not a mystery, but it is a fairly massive list. However, President Obama has been pretty clear about the Cliff Notes version of it: more Infrastructure, more Health Care and in some cases differently directed Health Care (away from pharmaceuticals and toward lifestyle changes and prevention), more Education with an emphasis on both early childhood education and post-secondary education, and more Clean Energy and Home Grown Energy. These are the national priorities that the Obama administration has set and is pursuing.

I'm not sure how securitization professionals can add value and energy to these sweeping societal changes. All I know is that in the next few years, these industries will be where the action is while allegedly slicing and dicing the risk associated with pools of financial assets will be far less in demand.

Don't Waste a Crisis!

Don't ever waste a crisis. This nugget of wisdom, in various forms, has been floating around for a while (and seems to be immensely popular lately) but it came to me courtesy of President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel who was discussing the American addiction to foreign oil. A crisis is a beautiful opportunity. Faced with drastic circumstances we become willing to take risks that would be too overwhelming or threatening otherwise. Backed into a corner by matters outside our control we summon unimagined resources. Feeling we have nothing left to lose, we launch ourselves on some of the riskiest, and most rewarding, adventures of our lives.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of times each day we experience little sparks of desire, tiny tugs in the direction of things we would like to do or try. An almost equal number of times during each ordinary day we push back on the desires, reminding ourselves that we have made other choices . . . and need to stick to them. Then a crisis comes along and upends the status quo. This same crisis that scares and threatens so much also gives us the perfect opportunity. It explodes our neat little day to day existence and with it all the unintentional shackles we have forged for ourselves. "If I don't have a job now anyway, maybe this is the time to take that six-month quest through India that I always dreamt about." "Since the entire industry in which I have built my career for the last twenty-five years has been leveled, maybe now is the time to mold a business out of my real passion. I can't do any worse than broke."

One of the most powerfully beneficial social movements of the last century was the tremendous advance in the field of alcoholism made by the group that came to be known as Alcoholics Anonymous. Whether we buy into all their tenets or not, no one can argue the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Step Recovery generally have brought amazing relief to innumerable suffering people all around the globe. What most people don't know, however, is that the AA program likely would never have been created but for the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent crushing economic depression. AA's co-founder, Bill Wilson, was a high flying finacier during the jazz age of the 1920s. Crushed by the '29 crash, he struggled to try and rebuild his life on the only basis that he knew -- finance, business and deal making. In the next 5 years he failed so many times, in business and with alcohol, that the only avenue of expression left open to him was to dedicate his life to helping other alcoholics recover. And he did it like he did everything else, to excess, and with excellence. His message of hope and recovery has spread in the decades since and spared millions of the afflicted, not to mention their families, from suffering and tragedies too great to measure. Crushed by a crisis he could no longer evade or avoid, Bill Wilson turned his talents away from business and helped launch a solution for what had been one of the most perplexing and heart breaking problems in history up until that time.

Maybe this economic crisis has come home to you personally. Maybe your position has been eliminated and your industry devastated. That's GREAT! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. In the face of complete devastation, with nothing left to lose, no one can blame us if we dare to try the big dream and fail. From the looks of things we were pretty much lined up for failure in any event. Why not take a small step in the direction of work that we really love, that we really enjoy and that is really meaningful to us? Wouldn't it be great to wake up in the morning and feel like we just can't wait to get started? What single simple step can we take today that will lead us closer to making the most important contribution we can imagine? Given the situation, it's not like we're doing anything else now anyway. What do we have to lose?

I once asked Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus ("Banker to the Poor") what all the lawyers would do in a world where loans do not require contracts, as is the case with his Bengladesh microfinance company Grameen Bank. His reply, "Something much more interesting."