As the financial industry slips further into despair and drags the economy down with it, I can’t help wondering how the brightest minds in the financial world failed to see this coming. The only answer I get in return from our esteemed presidential candidates, the talking heads on TV and virtually everyone else I’ve asked is one word: greed. The bankers’ greed has harmed us all — so the story goes. That answer appeals to my sense of outrage just as I imagine it appeals to yours. There is just one small problem — that answer directly contradicts one of the most stable findings in the history of psychological research. Greed is all about a ravenous appetite for personal gain. It’s about stopping at nothing, and risking anything, to get ahead. However, we know for a fact that most people simply will not take risks merely to get ahead.
My research confirms decades of earlier decision-making research, revealing time and again that 75% of people are cautious and only 25% are risky and impulsive. Most people worry far more about falling behind than they worry about getting ahead. That is why courage is so rare and fear is so common. This phenomenon is especially true in the banking industry. In fact, Goldman Sachs is consistently lauded by analysts for embracing a culture of risk-taking instead of discouraging risk. For most banks, risk is to be avoided like a plague-infested rat. It’s worth noting that, at the present, the risky Goldman Sachs is one of the only banks who did not over-invest in mortgages and remains relatively healthy now because of it.
In the beginning of the housing bubble, a small number of impulsive hedge fund managers and mortgage brokers certainly led the sub-prime charge. Indeed, they sought to get ahead by exploiting loopholes in lending laws.
But they alone could not cause a bubble. There simply aren’t enough impulsive buyers or lenders to impact the market this dramatically. The real problems began when everyone else got involved. As the housing bubble built, the cautious majority of home-buyers and bankers alike decided that the real risk was not getting in on the housing market. That’s when things spiraled out of control. We ignored the downright silly loan terms. We talked ourselves into buying (and underwriting) with little quips of rationalization like “if we don’t get in now, we’ll never get in!” The implication of such a suggestion is that everyone else is already “in” and will continue driving prices up for eternity, and I will be left behind penniless and homeless. Homebuyers feared falling behind their neighbors. Banks feared falling behind their competitors and mortgage business upstarts. Just as in the greatest of classical tragedies, trying to outrun our fears is the very thing responsible for making those fears a reality.
It is true that what is done is done. So why waste our time making esoteric arguments about the psychology of what went wrong? Whether it’s greed or fear, who cares? We are not out of the woods yet. What went wrong is still going wrong. The most dangerous part of a bursting bubble is the impulsive aftermath. As the housing bubble bursts, dysfunctional impulsive behavior climaxes because the fear of losing compounds. Typically cautious people make mad dashes for the exits and trample good judgment on the way out. Until we address the root of the problem — fear and not greed — we’ll continue shooting ourselves in the collective foot wondering why poor impulsive choices persist long after greed has disappeared from the equation. Like our superstitious ancestors, we’ll continue trying to end a drought with the modern equivalent of human sacrifices and rain dances. We will try to cure a problem caused by fearful impulsivity by invoking a frightfully impulsive bailout, or some other knee-jerk reaction.
If we are going to get out of this mess, we must stop digressing into the same old game of pin-the-blame-on-greed. It is time for cooler heads to prevail. It is time that all of us — congress, bankers, Americans — start addressing the real problem, and stop letting fearful impulses guide our decisions.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:42 am
“homo est animal rationale”: “Man is a rational being” reminds the ancient Latin saying.
However, the “fight or flight” response fired by adrenaline seems to have overridden our rational nature. Fight or flight is designed to protect us from immanent danger and threats. It is not THE game plan. All plays are not “Hail Marys”.
One knows that fear is not from the Lord. Repeatedly scripture and Jesus admonish us to “fear not little flock”. Fear, not a rational decision making process have driven the past and present in this case.
The future is yet to be determined. Whenever I must make an important decision, I evaluate whether or not fear is driving my behavior. If it is, I try to discern God’s voice in the chaos. He brings light to the world and chases away the darkness (St Augustine).
It is time for individuals to call upon the Lord and bring him into the halls of Congress and the floors of Wall Street. But then we’d have to trust….and most people are just too afraid to do that……..
October 10th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Sorry, couldn’t disagree more. “…*only* 25% are risky and impulsive?” Plenty to start the slide into chaos. And, even if only a fraction of them participated in the corrupting of the financial systems, still plenty enough. Also, most of them perceived *no risk* because of first, the removal of regulatory safeguards; second, no organizational or personal oversight (i.e., lack of ethics); third, “everyone else is doing it” (”so it must be OK”). No enforcement –> no responsibility –> no accountabiity.
While the organizational and personal greed may have *only* put the wheels in motion, fear then did take over. But greed was the factor that put the combustibles together, soaked them in gasoline, and then lit the match.
All the governmental efforts to stop the slide into chaos will be for naught - the piper will be paid.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Horse feathers! This is not the first, nor the last, article with the modus operandi, ” am I the only one who…”. You can almost hear the trees falling as the same experts who, two years ago, failed to see what was coming, now enlightened, make claim of singular wisdom on what is moving the economy. I do not accept that I am one of a fearful and clueless mass who are unable to make sound money decisions. The present financial crisis was not caused by a few thousand bad mortgage loans but by financial greed throughout the market; by high-risk investors and their advisers (the so-called “sharks in suits). Most middle Americans have already figured out that the leaders in government and financial institutions are the ones who are clueless… and there is no relief on the horizon. Pray we find the moral leadership so sorely lacking in this country.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Well, I believe that “greed” is fear in disguise. People are afraid that their basic needs will not be met. In order to solve this problem themselves, without trusting that God provides for even the sparrows, they twist acquiring money so that it is not a means to live but, rather, an end in itself.
Avarice, as most CE readers know, is a Deadly sin. The putrid rot will kill souls and hurt even the innocent. The stench alone infiltrates my house since I didn’t lose a dime but must cope with the ramifications of a depression. With 11 kids, my soul wealth lies with the Lord and my material wealth is my children.
People are acting irrationally at this point out of fear of losing “everything”. The Pearl of Great Price cannot be lost, only shared as Love expands into the universe.
I think the author was trying to say that people’s precrash behavior was guided by fear of not keeping up with the “Jones’”.
In this case, fear and greed are two sides of the same coin.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Do any of you listen to Dave Ramsey? I catch him from time to time and I think I have heard him make the same point — that fear is a terrible basis on which to make monetary decisions. All this panic selling just feeds on itself. I think people who have been living more modestly simply have less fear — we don’t fear losing our “status symbols” because we don’t have any.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Mary, I haven’t heard of Mr Ramsey. I’ll google him.
I remember years ago observing ordinary folks’ giddiness over the stock market. They were online constantly checking their portfolio. I thought “vanity of vanities”…..
I feel so thankful that God called my husband and me to have a large family. The life style a large family necessitates obviates many vices. It has acted as a protective force keeping my own greed in check. Therefore, I must conclude that easy contraception has enabled greed to grow within families. Furthermore, contraceptive use is motivated by fear: seeing a child as a burden and not a blessing. Obedience to this teaching, despite lack of understanding, may have protected some Catholics from financial trouble ironically.
Greed and fear.
Fear and greed.
When you don’t trust God you won’t succeed.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Most people (90%+) are floating on too much credit. Some are floating on way more than others. Most, though are floating on more than they really should. It is our nature, without Christ’s grace! The economy and easy access to credit has made all this possible. It will not go away soon. As waynergf said … “the piper must be paid.”
We are just finally hitting the collective “oh my gosh, I have too much credit” point. It’ll get better when we all relax, save more, pay off our credit and wait until prices fall.
No government bail out or financial analyst/expect will change this. We finally are smelling the coffee.
- GK
October 10th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Fear? I think not…
1977: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs the Community Reinvestment
Act into Law. The law pressured financial institutions to extend home
loans to those who would otherwise not qualify. The Premise: Home
ownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime, investment, jobs, etc.
Results: Statistics bear out that it did not help.
1992: Republican representative Jim Leach (IO) warned of the danger that Fannie and Freddie were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the principals and the stockholding few.
1993: Clinton extensively rewrote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s rules turning the quasi-private mortgage-funding firms into semi-nationalized monopoies dispensing cash and loans to large Democratic voting blocks and handing favors, jobs and contributions to
Political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and now the collapse of Freddie and Fannie.
1994: Despite warnings, Clinton unveiled his National Home-Ownership Strategy which broadened the CRA in ways congress never intended.
1995: Congress, about to change from a Democrat majority to Republican, Clinton orders Robert Rubin’s Treasury Dept to rewrite the rules. Robt. Rubin’s Treasury reworked rules, forcing banks to satisfy quotas for sub-prime and minority loans to get a satisfactory CRA rating. The rating was key to expansion or mergers for banks. Loans began to be made on the basis of race and little else.
1997 - 1999: Clinton, bypassing Republicans, enlisted Andrew Cuomo, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Developement, allowing Freddie and Fannie to get into the sub-prime market in a BIG way. Led by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, congress doubled down on the risk by easing capital limits and allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments vs. 10% for banks. Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks their enterprises boomed.
With incentives in place, banks poured billions in loans into poor communities, often “no doc”, “no income”, requiring no money down and no verification of income. Worse still was the cronyism: Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of work-politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. 384 politicians got big campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie. Over $200 million had been spent on lobbying and political activities. During
The 1990’s Fannie and Freddie enjoyed a subsidy of as musch as $182 Billion, most of it going to principals and shareholders, not poor borrowers as claimed.
Did it work? Minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million
New homeowners but many of those loans have gone bad and the minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.
1999: New Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, became alarmed at Fannie and Freddie’s excesses. Congress held hearings the ensuing year but nothing was done because Fannie and Freddie had donated millions to key congressmen and radical groups, ensuring no meaningful changes would take place. “We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage our credit and interest rate risks,” Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, a former Clinton official and current Barack Obama advisor, bragged to
investors in 1999.
2000: Secretary Summers sent Undersecretary Gary Gensler to Congress seeking an end to the “special status”. Democrats raised a ruckus as did Fannie and Freddie, headed by politically connected CEO’s who knew how to reward and punish. “We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation’s housing and mortgage markets” Freddie spokesperson Sharon McHale said. It was the last chance during the Clinton era for
reform.
2001: Republicans try repeatedly to bring fiscal sanity to Fannie and Freddie but Democrats blocked any attempt at reform; especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen.Chris Dodd who now run key banking committees and were huge beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants.
2003: Bush proposes what the NY Times called “the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago”. Even after discovering a scheme by Fannie and Freddie to overstate earnings by $10.6 billion to boost their bonuses, the Democrats killed reform.
2005: Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warns Congress: “We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk”. Sen. McCain, with two others, sponsored a Fannie/Freddie reform bill and said, “If congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole”. Sen. Harry Reid accused the GOP ;of trying to “cripple the ability of Fannie and Freddie to
carry out their mission of expanding homeownership” The bill went nowhere.
2007: By now Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee over HALF of the $12 trillion US mortgage market. The mortgage giants, whose executive suites were top-heavy with former Democratic officials, had been working with Wall St. to repackage the bad loans and sell them to investors. As the housing market fell in ‘07, subprime mortgage portfolios suffered major losses. The crisis was on, though it was 15 years in the making.
2008: McCain has repeatedly called for reforming the behemoths, Bush urged reform 17 times. Still the media have repeated Democrats’ talking points about this being a “Republican” disaster. A few Republicans are complicit but Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats, regulated by Democrats, largely run by Democrats and protected by Democrats. That’s why taxpayers are now being asked for $700 billion!!
October 10th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Marcey,
Very educational timeline. I have one question though. How could cheap inner-city housing be causing all of this trouble? What about the $300,000++ homes in California, in all of those areas plagued with foreclosures? It would seem to me that these would be an enormous part of the problem, and that these were junk loans as much as inner-city “no-verification” loans - more so because of the much higher per-loan loss. Those loans were made by foolish lenders and foolish borrowers, banks giving too much and borrowers borrowing too much to buy homes at wildly inflated prices - prices that were inflated because of the low interest rates available. But, I do not know that much about it, so I could be wrong. Can you address that part of the crisis?
October 10th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
SharG,
Greedy bankers have certainly played a part in this mess as have the sort of homeowners you are speaking about in California and although I could just as easily give a timeline for the ways in which Clinton Democrats provided and promoted the sort of “life is dream bubble” that had to burst, I will not.
What I will assure you is that I contacted my representative and senators and voiced a big fat “do not bail out the greedy bankers” just as I’ve posted this timeline here.
You see, there is more than enough blame to go around but it is high time that the weight of the blame is redistributed. You know, sort of like obama wants to redistribute the wealth, although I’m sure not his personal wealth. To which more statistics can be shared on the fact that of all the candidates and the one who claims to care about me and you, he’s given the least of his personal wealth to charities.
Yep, there’s lot of blame to go around but let’s do it openly and honestly and fairly.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
thanks, Marcey. Maybe you could forward your timeline to Jimmy Carter. He seems fairly, well totally, clueless.
Obama is the Manchurian Candidate. That’s why nothing will stick to him and nothing is reported regarding him.
McCain is a true American hero, who has a verifiable record of doing something other than hiding in cloak closets during votes condemning the vilification, by Obama bankrollers, of honored generals aka Gen Petraeus.
I’m not wacko crazy about McCain. In fact I didn’t support him in the primaries. But……he has integrity, transparency, and years of experience. He encourages you to check out his record. The other one doesn’t even have one to verify.
McCain is himself. Consider HIM, the man.
Obama is Acorn, Soros, Moveon.org, Ayers, Hugo Chavez and any cat who wants to sign up and send him money. Consider Obama, the puppet? Never.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Elkabrikir,
Amen!
The reason for the timeline is that I was asked to defend voting for McCain if I wasn’t swayed by the abotion so I did lots of research, printed out their respective voting records (love your nod to obama’s stay in the cloak room!) and even with abortion off the table it seemed more than obvious to me how I would vote, even if I weren’t a Catholic. I thought the information was so worthwhile that posting on this article seemed perfect. And I sure came across all you’ve mentioned as well (Acordn, Moveon.org etc.).
Yikes.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I think you’re right on the greed, Marcey, but there is something else to it… Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover members list amazing debt levels - 100k in cc debt, for instance. These cc’s never should have been given out. That is most definitely greed on the part of the lenders, and incredible foolishness/weakness/buying into materialism on the part of the borrowers. This was brought about, I am guessing, by regulatory changes that allowed usurious lending rates - truly immoral default rates of 30% plus, coupled with changes that make bankruptcy harder so that the immoral lenders are protected. I know a lot of the financial crisis is based on the housing market, but it’s also based on incredible foolishness all around. You don’t hear much about the cc debt levels since the housing crisis is the current focus, but I believe there is more pain to come on that issue. I doubt that even the US gov’t wants to take on ownership of bad unsecured debt. And so another question - with Republicans having a reputation for wanting to protect the rich, are they the ones who encouraged the changes in usury and bankruptcy laws?
October 10th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Marcey,
Excellent, excellent detailed write-up. I’ve been wanting to get some more background on this fiasco, but alas my local paper hasn’t deemed it newsworthy.
What I’m perplexed about is how everyone seems to think the whole economy is tanking because a few big banks are failing. There are lots of other industries and lots of small businesses who are mostly going about business as usual. I work in the IT industry and while we have definitely seen some slowdown, it’s hardly at the rate that the stock market seems to be tanking. So I agree that fear and a herd mentality seem to be pushing much of this.
Also, the bailout seems to have done little to ease fears in the stock market. Can we take it back since it hasn’t really done any good anyway?
October 11th, 2008 at 10:50 am
No, SharG it was the Democrats who through policy and regulation forced banks to take on these high risk loans. They prefer regulation to law because regulations don’t have to go through the legislature. I mean it has oversight from a congressional committee, but it doesn’t go through the entire bill-to-law process that exposes it to public debate the way laws do.
Here is the logic. The logic was that access to credit would help cure poverty. If less-qualified borrowers could get loans, home ownership among minorities would increase. In fact they promised in campaigns that making more credt available to minority businesses and lower-income people would be something they would do. So that was the policy-setting.
The regulatory part was by the feds setting quotas for how many high-risk loans every bank had to provide. Banks that didnt play along were fined, or their merger/aquisition plans would not be approved.
Barack Obama worked for law firm that sued banks for no providing loans to high-rish borrowers.
The Democrats set up Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to secure the bad paper they were forcing the banks to create.
A few years ago the Republicans tried to warn about this — including McCain — and they wanted to pass laws to rein it in, but the Dems controlled congress so they couldn’t. And of course every time they tried to do so, they were accused of being against the poor.
The problem is the everyone forgot the proverb: The borrower is a slave to the lender.
The CC problem is beyond comprehension. I cannot imagine people having 30, 40k or more in CC debt. Greed, weakness, I don’t know — it sounds like insanity to me. How do they ever sleep? I think I would die of sheer nervousness if I had to live with that.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mary, they sleep at night by not thinking about it. it’s always been there, so it always will be. However, the bill is about to come due, and the panic that caused so much suicial behavior in ‘29 is going to look like a picnic compared to the foreseeable future.
Marcy, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your hard work in putting together your timeline. I’d read all that info in various places and at various times, but hadn’t the time (or, imagination, to be honest) to thread it together. I am copying your well-organized data, and will use it liberally in the next 23 days. If you want credit (no pun intended) for it, I’ll gladly give it but will need your info. If you’re willing to give it, let me know and I’ll give you my contact info. Thank you!
Finally, I want everyone to know that God is watching out for His people–often in left-handed, hilarious ways. Hubby is one of those “big spenders”, and after declaring bankruptcy, we’ve been forced (thank You, Lord!) to live on what he makes. With nothing to fall back on, we lost an overpriced house in a dying city a year ago, and are living in a mobile home that cost 1/4 the price in a “living” city. It’s “hand to mouth”, now, but at least the coming disaster isn’t going to impact us as much as it would have. Praise be to God!
October 12th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
SharG….
RE: October 10th, 2008 at 1:58 pm - “How could cheap inner-city housing be causing all of this trouble? What about the $300,000++ homes in California, in all of those areas plagued with foreclosures?”
Shar, the explanation is found in what’s commonly known as “the law of large numbers”. Yes, there are the $300k homes in California. But the $300k number few compared to the sub-prime homes.
If you doubt the possibility of this consider taxes. Roughly 10% of the filings pay 70% of the Personal Income Tax paid. To bein this top 10$ you have to make an Adjusted Gross Income of $108k. {http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6, they use IRS data}
So, that leaves 90% of the potential home buing population buying houses based on a $108k salary or less. So if you add up the number of less than $300k homes by their value the number you get will be much much larger than the number you would get if you added up all the greater than $300k homes.
Now take this larger number, the sub 300k homes and leverage against them and it becomes even larger.
That’s the seed of the problem. It was not created by greed, it was created by false charity. By forcing banks to make bad loans, bad business decisions, under the name of “fairness” and “the American dream” of owning a home. Everything else that comes after is simply the fruit of trying to make up for the fundamental wrong of forcing a business into charity work. All of it.
IMHO the Democratic party is the source of this situation simply because their ideology IS the seed. Banks were forced by CRA and Democrat initiatives to make loans to people who banks knew, on a business basis, were to risky. Yes as this seed grew it produced fruit that pulled in the fallen nature of Republicans, but for now Im pointing out what so much of the media does not. It is the media {ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN} painting only part of the picture that IMHO has lead to so much of the confusion on the part of the American people.
So AFTER the banks were forced to make these loans they turned to Wall Street for an answer to the question “how do I get these loans off my books”. Wall Street came up with “securitization”, Mortgage Backed Securities {MBS}. If you cant picture an MBS, think of a mutual fund invested in stocks in all the same sector - say autos. Now instead of auto sector stocks they are all home mortgages. The concept of securitization is really that simple.
It’s where Fannie Mae {FNM} and Freddie Mac {FRE} came into the picture; they played very very prominent roles in “packaging” the MBS’s. They created more of these than anyone else.
Since US homeowners so infrequently defaulted on loans, credit agencies gave AAA credit ratings to the MBSs. What are the implications of a AAA rating? The first is called “leverage’, the second is a form of leverage called insurance. The ratings made the MBS’s look safer which lowered insurance taken out against an MBS default and allowed more leverage to given against the MBS asset.
Dont get hung up on the ratings per say. Some MBS were rated AAA, some Aaa, some BBB, etc. Each lower rating simply means less can be borrowed against the asset and insuring the asset costs more. What is important to realize is as housing prices dropped, so too did the credit rating on the MBS’s.
Now, to put this all together.
I want you to think of a triangle of dominoes. Think of each domino being a mortgage. Now think of a very large triangle of dominos, the size of a gym floor. One of these super-sized triangles is a MBS. The majority of the triangles are not sub-prime. But there are enough in most of the triangles that there’s a pretty good chance the right ones falling bring down the whole triangle. Now go somewhere in the middle and tip one over towards the widest part of the triangle… Tip another over towards the narrow part… You wont take down the whole triangle but you will take out a whole lot.
Now think of these triangles being linked together by business transactions. If you lend money to someone who’s triangles have too many bad MBS’s, and they go under… You dont get your money back…. And you go under. This is why the “credit markets” arent lending.
Oh yea, that leverage thing…. These triangles, because they were rated so high, were borrowed against. And the money borrowed, it wasnt put in the bank. They didnt buy gold with it. It was “invested”.
And what about “Lunch bucket Joe”….. Well he took out a home equity loan and made his life materially better… In short, he did EXACTLY what the “Wall Street” types did.
The only real difference between the Wall Street types and the “Lunch bucket Joe’s”. The Wall Street types did it with bigger numbers.
What’s truly sad now. The classic display of a “democratic mob” mentality. This is EXACTLY why our Founding Fathers founded a Constitutional Republic. NOT a Democracy.
There are grave dangers assailing our country right now.
The gravest ones are NOT financial.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Marcey….
Regarding your “marcey says: October 10th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Fear? I think not…
1977: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs the Community Reinvestment
Act…..”
Where did you get this information, it would have been nice to see references.
Just to be clear, I agree with you 100%. I am not ignorant of financial markets and have been trying to explain this to friends for over a year.
I can be emailed at hcsknight@yahoo.com if you have info that’s too large to be posted.
Thanks
October 12th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Nick,
“The Financial Crisis Is About Fear, Not Greed”
Im sorry Nick, I think you are making the classic mistake of looking at the result and not the cause.
You are right, this crisis isnt about greed. This crisis is at heart about what happens when true Charity is replaced by false charity. In it’s soul it’s about a false understanding of God’s Law and Will.
That being said, having some experience in financial markets, you are right that slaying fear is critical to ending the crisis.
What scares me is the tremendous amount of dis-information be put out regarding the source of the crisis. This dis-information is leading to solutions which are not solutions but rather seeds which in the future will lead the US to moving further away from Our Lord.
VCDA
Knight
October 12th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
hcsknight, thanks much for your explanation. Along with Marcy’s data on how we got here, that rounds out the picture for me.
Question, please? Isn’t it true that the “disinformation” on the source of the crisis will also lead to solutions which will also “set us up” for more of the same in the future? If so, do you have any ideas on how to stop it–or, at least, minimize the personal impacts?
October 12th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Check these out folks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5z9lD4C2Io&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_313445
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs