Complicit

Continuing with yesterday’s theme about how the well-off are also feeling economic pain:

Spectrem Group said U.S. households worth $1 million or more - excluding their primary residence - have seen their assets decline by 30% during the financial crisis. Almost one-fifth of the asset declines were greater than 40%, the report said. "There's a huge amount of anger," said George Walper, president of Spectrem Group.

Those who have earned, scrimped, and saved their way to what they thought would be a golden retirement are shocked at their sudden reversal of fortune. But there is no one villain in this tale (unless you entrusted all your assets to Bernard Madoff).

If you participated in real estate as a buyer, lender, developer, borrower, or investor, if you worked for a financial institution or a Wall Street law firm, if you were a politician who encourages home ownership, if you actually believed that modern finance lowered risk and raised returns, if you liked how implicit government guarantees were keeping borrowing costs low across the board, then you were complicit in the current mess. In other words, look in the mirror (it hardly needs saying, but that goes for me too).

Go ahead. Be angry and let off steam. The economy tanked just as you were getting comfortable. Sorry, that’s life. Figure out what to do. Then get back to work. © 2009 Stephen Yuen