FRAM SYSTEMS ^blog

Pundits everywhere are spewing out sentiments and speculation about the causes of the current economic crisis. As we begin to feel the impact on our own individual conditions and to see the effects on businesses and people around us we are asking why? What fault, what flaw allowed this to happen? Haven’t we learned anything from the past about how to avert such a disaster? Some of us are even introspective enough to ask ourselves, what did I do to contribute to the situation?

So let me put something out there, something for you to think about and perspective I haven’t as yet heard in the press. Maybe this is a religious problem. Now just hold on a minute. What do I mean about religion? No, not Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism or any of the other world religions but the religions called laissez-faire capitalism, profit and growth.

Our adherence to the belief that markets are self regulating and are able to correct all our errors is perhaps all too true. Just as the collapse of Soviet Communism caused great hardship and despair for those who were staunch supporters of that system, so too will the collapse of the market economy hold great hardships in store for those that most sincerely believed in that religion. Indeed, if history has taught us anything it is that religious fanaticism and fundamentalism often leads to great conflict, destruction and disaster. What is worse is that such disasters consume many innocent victims as well.

So as our religious fervor spurred us on to accumulating greater financial wealth, we remained blissfully ignorant to the inevitable consequences of our actions. We lacked the foresight to see the need for significant controls over our financial markets that let our economy become over-leverage, overspent and hopelessly in debt. Almost everyone appeared to win. So when the wave finally broke as indeed every wave must, it smashed many to the ground.

If only we had been less hopeful, fervent and reckless in our pursuit of wealth, if only we had leaders who had foreseen the end of game would we have been spared the coming hardships? Moreover would we have even allowed them to spoil our party?

So what about values allowed someone like Bernie Madoff to go become a high priest of capitalist culture? Was it our belief, our desire to believe that growth would go on forever? Did we not want to look at the man behind the curtain?

I believe that our lack of values resulted in a true destruction of value in our economy. So perhaps then our crisis is not an economic one but one of values. As we dig our way out of the economic mess we’ve created we should also be thinking about what the core values of country and our culture should be. Perhaps we should reshape our religion of laissez-faire capitalism into one introspection and self control. After all, isn’t that what the religions of the world attempt to do?