Cosine Jeremiah and his Musings

It is 2009, and it looks like the sky is falling. Perhaps it is, just a little. I think it is a good thing. How can I say that as people are losing their jobs? It is easy if you look at what will bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people. For too long our economy has suffered at the hands of large, lumbering creatures that do not care one whiff about you or anyone else—cold blooded monsters that would stab you in the back and kick your rotting corpse to the curb the minute it thinks you missed a payment due to its own poor accounting practices. I call these companies the dinosaurs. Those that will suffer the most in this down economy are the dinosaurs.

As the dinosaurs continue to fall, the need for the goods and services they have been providing up until now will not disappear. The people that previously fed the dinosaurs (customers and employees) will have new opportunities to feed another kind of creature that has always been around here and there but will explode in numbers to take care of the things dropped by the dinosaurs. These creatures are the mammals.

Mammals are good for economies. Most of them are small, light on their feet, and they are warm-blooded. They do not create a “Customer Loyalty” program to pretend they care; they actually do care, and that care is felt person-to-person in the dealings of business. Because mammals are typically smaller than dinosaurs, it is easier for them to operate closer to home. Your money stays local instead of going to Washington or New York. In the good times when Washington and New York are flush with cash, the dinosaurs are happy to re-invest it everywhere. As times turn ugly, they will cling onto your cash and your locale will see nothing coming back. This is why it is so hard to find a loan these days, even if your credit worthiness is really good.

I urge people to not wait for the dinosaurs they feed to collapse, but to invest today in the mammals available in your area. Your money will be going towards making your local economy more robust and better able to provide new jobs in your area as the dinosaurs continue to release personnel. Times will be tough for the next year or two, but in the end I want to look back at this time as the time of opportunity—our time for building a new kind of economy that will take care of us for time eternity.

Let me repeat one thing before I sign off: invest in your local mammals today. Feed them now so they will be strong enough to feed you back when you need them.