Welcome Back, Humility

Dear Humility,

We want to apologize for forgetting about you. We’ve neglected you, but like a mistreated yet faithful dog, you’ve waited for us to open the door to greet and embrace you once more. Thank you for your forgiveness and patience.

During booming economic growth, you see, we thought we didn’t need you. Instead, we made friends with Arrogance, Cockiness, and Overconfidence. They encouraged us to create an overheated, overleveraged economy built on Materialism, Greed, and Excess. We ignored the lessons taught to us by our grandparents, about how awful life was during the Great Depression and about the importance of maintaining a close friendship with you.

We built up record levels of household debt and stopped saving. We signed on to mortgages we couldn’t afford. Many of us took out second mortgages, depleting the equity we had built up in our homes so that we could buy more stuff. We thought our supply of money was endless.

Consumers weren’t the only ones duped. As business leaders, we overleveraged our companies. We used risky leveraged buyouts, mergers, and acquisitions as get-rich-quick deals. Our real estate became an asset that we could pledge to the bank for more money. Our pals Materialism, Greed, and Excess took us for a good ride, but they’re fickle friends who abandoned us at the first sign of trouble.

Old friend, we are in deep trouble. Huge firms that were the bedrock of Wall Street have been wiped out. Our country’s banks—the backbone of our financial stability since the Depression—are in serious trouble, and pundits predict that only a small percentage of them will still be around in a few years. Automobile manufacturers that were the pride of America have fallen to their knees. Can you believe that we’re so desperate we’ve allowed the government to step in and take over banks and automakers?

The stock market has crumbled, shrinking the value of our investments and postponing retirement plans for many. Unemployment has risen, causing consumers to stop spending on anything that isn’t essential. Many small businesses have gone out of business, while many large businesses have filed for bankruptcy or been liquidated. People have lost their sources of credit, their health care benefits, and their homes. Our old friends Pride and Confidence are also slipping away.

Unfortunately, our government hasn’t been much help. Legislative and regulatory bodies that were supposed to watch over us failed miserably. And just like consumers and businesses, government was spending much more than it had in revenues, which resulted in a huge national debt. Now, that debt is being covered by China, which, until we needed its help, was considered an “evil empire” and a potential threat to our national security. But I suppose when we’re desperate for money, we can overlook such minor details.