"Financial" Reflections

In a strongly-worded New Year's message released in advance by the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI blames the "unbridled pursuit of wealth and short term profit" poses "a threat to all, even for those who are able to reap benefits during periods of financial euphoria."

He further attacks that the nearsightedness of the global financial sector being so overly focused on "very short term profit" as the root cause of poverty and the global food crisis at the expense of "the common good". The Pope also fears that with such kind of ungodly pursuit, there will always be that "risk" that "the rich will live in an ivory tower surrounded by a desert of poverty and degradation."

With all due respect to his Holiness, the risk he has been talking is already passe and moot. In fact, I see or we all see them happening all over. The rich doesn't only live in ivory towers, they didn't even know where to build the next one. In the Philippines alone, only few hundred families control the entire economy. They can shut down this economy anytime if they need to. And this trend is not uncommon in most countries.

Poverty and degradation is nothing new too. More than half of us only have skies as our roofs or live upon the charity of others. Others choose to live as felons and choose to even die with it just to feed their families.  

But I have to quite agree that the current global financial crisis had ''demonstrated how financial activity is only focused on itself without any consideration of the long term, the common good''. Finance has lost its role as a bridge between the present and the future, "in the creation of new production opportunities and employment in the long term."    

The pontiff also points that the financial system is "based upon very short-term thinking, which aims at increasing the value of financial operations and concentrates on the technical management of various forms of risk" instead of "an opportunity to achieve something important in the battle against poverty and offer peace and justice resources which until now have been unthinkable''.

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Above all, I think greed is what this financial crisis is all about. If you remember last October, Richard Fuld president of the fourth largest investment bank in the US, Lehman Brothers, testified before Congress that he took home three hundred million dollars in pay and bonuses for his nearly a decade in service or an average of 37.5 million dollars a year. He was quoted as saying during the hearing that "I don't expect you to feel sorry for me."

We don't feel sorry for you, Mr. Fuld. The greed that lives in you and the rest of your "think tanks" at Wall Street, should feel sorry for all the trouble you have caused the world today. And I just hope you can sleep with all that money you got from unsuspecting investors. And if you have come to your senses now and worry about what to do with all that money, you can also try charity. Take it from Elvis Presley, "Sharing money is what gives it its value." (me winks)

Anyway, as much as we might want to control the actions of others, we cannot. Blaming Mr. Fuld doesn't change the course of the global crisis to our favor. The financial situation is bad right now, and we have to make personal sense from this mess we're in. Meaning, we have to accept the reality of the recession. Most of are worried, fearful and even angry. But one of the things we need to do now is to keep our fear and worry under control.

Since the full impact of the recession will be the first quarter of next year, it's time to sort and thresh the essential from the non-essential. Prioritize those that preserve the needs of your family, business or career. The keyword therefore to surviving the crisis is to "Simplify, simplify," says Henry David Thoreau.

Happy New Year!

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