2009

I spent new year’s eve having a quiet night in with my girlfriend. Although we are grateful for many things like our health, our family, our friends, and most importantly the freedom to wake up and pursue our passions, we just did not feel right about celebrating this year.

In both of our lives, we have never seen the world in such a state of volatility, uncertainty, and despair. Two things stand out above others:

1. The ongoing global wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur and many other regions which our media fails to bring to our attention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ongoing_conflicts. In the addition, the current escalating violence in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis that has once again unfolded in the region.

2. The global financial meltdown. In the U.S., we had leveraged a false sense of reality to finance our excessive ways for too long and those false realities were unmasked this past year.

a) Houses appreciating at an 8-10% clip between 1998-2006, compared to a less than 1% clip between 1930-1997

b) Foreign ownership of U.S Treasuries growing from about 20% in 1996 to about 60% today

c) Total debt as a percentage of GDP approaching 300%

d) an explosion in subprime lending.

All of this resulted in the U.S. becoming a pure consumer economy, as we borrowed beyond our means to spend/consume/spend/consume/etc. Over 70% of our GDP is now associated directly with consumer spending versus real value creation. The false sense of realities came crashing down on us this year and this past holiday season we witnessed the vulnerabilities of the U.S. consumer economy when consumers have less access to debt. With the credit markets in a total state of redefinition, the U.S. economy is now in a state of equal shock as it has to come to grips with real value creation versus living in excess through the false realities noted above. The net result is a decrease in consumer spending and an increase in unemployment. Both of these in turn lead to greater foreclosures, temporary deflation, and long term inflation as a result of the actions from the fed/treasury. The pain of this financial crisis is felt by everyone, from families losing sources of income, to families forced into foreclosure, to retirees forced out of retirement, to students without access to student loans, etc. It is a crisis unlike any our generation has experienced.

As such, we just did not feel right celebrating this year, and instead had a quiet NYE with the hope that collectively as a nation we can create a more peaceful and prosperous 2009. With change ready to take the helm in the U.S. on January 20^th, we are hopeful that the global wars and humanitarian crises can be met with intelligence versus violence. As for the economy, which we have more direct control over, it is time to create versus take. It is time to wake up and build businesses that create value, create jobs, and grow our economy through value creation versus consumer spending. It is time to become disciplined about not living beyond our means and spending our limited time creating value versus spending. It will help us not only economically but spiritually.

Here is to Hope for a better 2009 for everyone, let us all do our part!