Many will wish 2009 away without regret.
Lost jobs. Foreclosed homes. Frozen wages. Wiped-out pensions, stock portfolios and 401(k) savings.
Drawdown of troops in one country; a surge in another.
Uncertainty on a myriad of fronts probably is the message for many as the final days of the year tick away.
Did we hit a depression or skirt around the edge in a deeply rooted recession?
Did the stimulus help, prolong, extend or delay?
For sure a decade of excesses and unfettered schemes of offering and leveraging unwarranted loans brought a worldwide economic tsunami.
Did we learn from the experiences?
Only time will tell, but an ongoing reshuffling of the global cards is unmistakable.
China is a player. Americans know this since the Asian country holds more than one key to the U.S. debt.
Iran never is far out of sight as an agitator and potential game changer in the Middle East.
North Korea starves for attention with a shaky hand on a potential nuclear trigger. Can you still spell "Cold War"?
Afghans search for an elusive goal -- stability -- in an extremely poor nation with a history of corruption and a failed takeover lesson taught by the former Soviet Union. One hopes history will not repeat.
At home unemployment hovers in double digits, with an uneven recovery under way that resembles the patchwork of a quilt. Chattanooga may offer new insights for those looking to regain a footing from manufacturing jobs gone awry. Three decades and a local reinvention later, those jobs are returning here, but the local lessons of the past should never be forgotten.
One major bank declared no more foreclosures through the holidays, but what really is needed are lessons in fundamentals of buying a house, paying a mortgage and not overextending.
No money should mean no loan and no debt. Seems simple but at some point in the 1990s and through the middle 2000s, that lesson either was ripped from the books or skipped in class. Rebates, no payments and no interest lead to economic peril in the long term; just ask your neighbor, your co-worker, your family.
Turmoil and economic dislocations either cause retraction and retrenchment or set the stage for improvements.
One challenge is being able to manage the uneasiness that permeates the workplace as employees warily view empty desks and reduced benefits and services, and wonder what is next.
Some businesses restructure while others close their doors permanently.
But economic disturbances as have gripped the nation and the world also are opportunities to retool, relearn and emerge even stronger, more technologically savvy and more focused.
The choices are not less painful, but the measure of leadership or lack thereof rises to the top.
New ways of doing business do not mean a total discarding of the past, but a new balance between old and new. Streamlining and consolidation lead to greater efficiency, but in a way that does not lessen quality. Many of those decisions were neglected until unforeseen economic turmoil forced them front and center. The results show up in the actions of the consumer, the citizen, the global friend or foe.
Time does tell whether leadership was used judiciously and appropriately to plan for a tomorrow that was shaped by the choices of the past.
To reach Tom Griscom, call 423-757-6472 or e-mail tgriscom@timesfreepress.com.
Or login with:
New Account