Orrin Woodward on LIFE & Leadership

Here is a super educational video on the credit crisis by Jonathan Jarvis.  Easy to understand and captures the underlying principles masterfully.  This is a “must watch” video for anyone wanting to understand where Wall Street and the Banks went wrong.  Loaning money is not immoral, but loaning money that you know is a bad risk and passing it off to a third party is grossly immoral.  The government getting involved and guaranteeing the money lenders immoral activities is beyond unreasonable.  In other words, the government gives permission to the money lenders to loan money to bad risk customers with a tacit agreement to be bailed out if anything goes wrong.  What a deal!  The government allows all the money lenders to keep all the profits and the USA tax payer gets to absorb all the risk! 

OPM – Other People’s Money

Allowing one group to spend OPM has the same end result thoughout history.  People will spend OPM much more aggressively than they will their own money.  Never get involved in a situation where your money is being spent at the whims of a third party.  Disaster assuredly awaits!  The government intervening in the markets passes the risk off on the taxpayers and the gains to the business community.  This is why big businesses do not mind abandoning free enterprise – they love to reduce risk and when Washington intervenes in the free markets, a monopoly of sorts is created.  The business person reduces risks and passes it on to OPM – the American tax payer.  How many more business entities will Washington (the American taxpayer) bail out because of tacit promises of protection.  Another perfect example of why Washington should not intervene.  Let the business people take the risk of their loans and you will see a more conservative standard on the loans.  The OPM principle will be eliminated and the entrepreneur will have to take the risk and the reward. 

You cannot insure everyone in business and therefore; you should not insure anyone in business.  There should be no special deals at the taxpayers expense.  I am afraid that the wrong lessons are being learned here.  Intervention caused the problems in the first place.  But instead of getting Washington out of business and forcing the risk and rewards to be entirely shouldered by the business community, Washington is now a full fledged partners with the business community and absorbing the business risk on the backs of taxpaying Americans.  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and even Alexander Hamilton would stand against this blatant abuse of governmental power. 

Where are the leaders in our society now?  We are witnessing a moral breakdown in business and government of unprecedented proportions and the answers I am hearing are more government intervention, not less.  We are about ready to take OPM to a new level and our current plan looks amazingly similar to Nazi Germany’s plan to regulate the economy of Germany.  As long as business does what they are told, the Nazi government would absorb the risk for the business community.  Hitler would have never come to power were it not for the complicit actions of the business community.  The business community of Germany bought into Hitler when he promised to absorb the downside risk and allow the businesses to keep the upside reward – all secured by the taxpayers of Germany. 

Remember a beginning entrepreneur loves free enterprise and the right to compete based upon allowing the best ideas to win.  But an established multi-billion dollar entity likes intervention better because it cost money and time to follow government regulations and this inhibits new entrepreneurs from freely entering the competitive landscape.  The established business community benefits and the new entrepreneurs along with the market customers are denied new ideas, methods and products.  The larger a company gets, the less they like free enterprise and the more they like a partnership with the government.  The government will assume the downside risk and inhibit new entrepreneurs from entering their markets.  We can get mad at the business owners all day long, but the only way to stop this is to get government out of intervening in the market in the first place.  If they stay out and only play the established role of government as an umpire, not part of the team, then free enterprise will take care of the rest!  Let freedom ring and let the best ideas win.  Let ideas be judged on the merit in the marketplace and if an idea doesn’t fly, then let the entrepreneurs that had the poor idea suffer the consequences.  It is called Creative Destruction and it made America the envy of the world!

America was once the largest creditor nation in the world with its ideas and products serving nearly all markets.  We are now the largest debtor nation and in bondage to those we owe!  We do not lack talented people, we do not lack the right ideas, but we do lack leaders of intestinal fortitude (guts) with moral courage to call out these abuses of power.  I am not a pessimist and believe in my heart that America can and will fix this, but not until we return to the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Allow the American ingenuity the freedom to accept responsibilty for their own lives and we will prosper.  America can show its critics what a freedom loving, principle centered, responsibility oriented citizenry can do!  I love America and what it stands for.  Will we learn from history or have we chosen to repeat it?  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

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