What This Country Needs Is Another Financial Crisis

Near-blasphemous, anti-growth blather? Particularly when U.S. auto sales are peaking at a six year high and people are congratulating each other for a bull-like market?

Well, I didn’t come up with this headline.

It was recently penned by Alan Sloan, Fortune magazine’s senior editor-at-large for finance and other related issues. A few months ago, Sloan also worked up another provocative and related headline: “Want to get away with murder? Become a bank.”

Why does he write this? Sloan cannot believe that the budget sequester, a stop-gap, don’t-cross-this-line initiative that Sloan calls “an exercise in economic idiocy” and other financial ills go unchecked.  Sloan worries that “we still have too-big-to-fail banks that depend on short-term financial markets, which could dry up in an instant.” He also raises the issue of “the debt-ceiling question, supposedly on hold until September, has disaster potential too.”

Sloan’s conclusion? “I don’t want to see a crisis, and I hope our alleged leaders, who aren’t stupid, bestir themselves before one strikes.”

“But,” he mournfully concludes, “I wouldn’t count on it.”

I submit to you that what Sloan is talking about is not primarily concerned with fiscal matters.

It is primarily concerned with trust, or more specifically, the LACK of trust.

A lack of trust has been plaguing world for more than a decade.  When trust lacking—whether at the personal, national or business level—things slow way down. They get more expensive. People lose sleep. People don’t buy things. They lose confidence.

On the other hand, when trust is high, the cost of business drops. Things speed up. People quit looking over their collective shoulders. They start buying things.

So how do we restore trust?

By keeping our word. By doing what we say we’ll do when we say we’ll do it. By truly being honest and transparent. By not posturing.  Through high performance, not “just enough.” By consistently exceeding expectations of customers, stakeholders and constituents. By working together, focused on the positive outcomes for all, not on personal agendas.

Trust, just like brand and reputation, takes time to build up. It can be destroyed—as it has—in a fraction of a second.

We don’t need another financial crisis. We need a sustained commitment to building trust.

And it all starts with one person. Will that person be you?

By Michael Snyder, Managing Principal, The MEK Group