Economic Solutions

As I see it, there are four basic issues that we need to confront in order to solve the economic crisis of our day:

1. Fear.

2. Greed.

3. Protectionism.

4. Pessimisim.

Here are 4 simple suggestions, one each for the above issues, to immediately reverse the capital destruction that is taking place in productive assets:

1. Provide security. Guarantee all bank deposits. I believe that America has already done this.

2. Eliminate all golden parachutes. Make them illegal. They seem immoral anyway.

3. Deregulate. For example, eliminate the mark to market requirement of illiquid assets.

4. Promote optimism. Eliminate short-selling for a time. This could be a similar move as to preventing the Hunt Brothers from cornering the silver market.

As I consider the loss of capital in dollars this year, I believe that it must be on the order of $20 Trillion dollars world-wide. If we were to mark to the market all of the real estate and other assets world-wide, the additional loss of capital in dollars is probably at least another $20 Trillion.

I believe that President Bush said that we would be stronger for going through this experience. He is right. Adversity makes us stronger.

Hopefully we will make good choices as we learn from this experience. Hopefully we will find ways to be kinder and gentler to one another.

We live in an extraordinary time in the history of the world. We are better off today than at any time in the history of our world.

But the challenges of today are immense. With a world population approaching 7 billion, the need to be productive is greater than ever.

Looking optimistically, does this mean, considering the synergistic potential of all of us working well together, that we can all be better off? It's worth a try.