September 8, 2009
We had been ignoring the signs for some time. But they were all there nonetheless. In early September 2008, the market seemed to at first breathe a brief sigh of relief at news of the government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. But investment banking giant Lehman Brothers was clearly on the ropes. Lehman was reporting a $3 billion dollar second quarter loss. And UBS, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch were all very troubled financial organizations.
Considerable numbers of bank, mortgage lender and insurance company failures were all just around the corner. But we really didn’t want to think about it. Employment and job stability in general had started to look a little iffy. In fact, all things economic didn’t really look that great, but after all, the election was only a couple of months away. In spite of the continuing bad news of late summer and early fall that had really started months earlier, there still existed a stubborn spirit of unfounded optimism.
We were clearly in denial then. We seemed certain at the time that things would somehow turn around. But we were in fact already desperately searching for a savior; someone who would take control of the precipitous; and now, in retrospect, virtually unstoppable slide in the economy and employment and come to the rescue of not only the country, but indeed of the entire world.
Now it's one year later and we’re still searching...