Paul Wilmot

Well I am sitting here mouth agape as I get all of these wonderful responses to my initial blog posts. So my first response is to try to prove I’m not a one trick pony and do have some more things on my mind. I am not trying to channel Will Rogers, the late great William F. Buckley, Jr. or any other talented commentators on current events. Far from it, I am an unworthy publicist who just happens to have had some great life experiences and want to share them with any of you who care to pick up on them.

THE RECESSION…aw c’mon it’s a depression. Once you name the elephant in the room all of a sudden he doesn’t seem so big. 40% of our wealth is gone, our IRA’s are off an average of 35% unless you know people who were in cash. (I know two and I always thought they were dim bulbs but hey, they were just scared shit of being broke so they stuck it in the mattress). Somehow their bulb wattage just went up right? My Miami house, which I treasure, is off at least 35% in value. And here is my take on the loss of wealth. If we use 1776 as the baseline, it took us over 230 years to get to this level of net worth and 40% or so of it evaporated in six months. Yes I would say that’s a recession all right. Sort of like saying if we hit in a dry spell and if 40% of the Atlantic Ocean went away we could almost walk to London…not a dry spell a world catastrophe.

So now that we recognize what we have gotten ourselves into…yes ourselves.

“No Paul, it was the bankers.”

Yeah right…so we were forced into those jumbo mortgages, bought art with loans from the auction houses and financed jewelry for our gals. Hell, the guys in Palm Beach were charging private jets on Amex cards to collect awards points and to keep money in Madoff. The CEO’s weren’t the only greedy ones. Like the Swine Flu it was an airborne illness from which no one was safe. So what’s next?

RECOVERY. Like anyone who has been hit with a plague or a pestilence eventually it goes away and we have to rebuild. For the older folks it will have to be done in a shorter period of time and they will be working longer to make that retirement money but that might not be so bad. People are living longer and living healthier. So we will be going to the gym in our 70’s, going to meetings, taking business trips and generally making ourselves useful. What is wrong with that? It might just help to lengthen the lifespan if you think about it.

The younger ones will also have to work harder, smarter and hopefully have learned a big lesson about not trying to grab too much without having some backup plans to have some liquidity and elasticity in prep for the next downturn…yes there will be ups and downs forever. No two periods of economic change are ever the same. History tells us that but pshaw, we never listen to history…hello WW I, WW II, Korea, Viet Nam…IRAQ!!!!

But in my opinion, if we can come out of this humbler and feeling less entitled…more benevolent toward our fellow human beings and truly feeling the need to be socially responsible as a result of some of the pain we have either observed or endured then the depression will have at the very least left us better off in many ways than we were before. Poorer yes. Needing to get back some of what we lost, yes. But there are more important issues at stake here like the human condition and if democracy and capitalism are as good as we say they are then let them guide us toward a comeback and a new start. That smart guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is sure trying hard to make it work. We need to as well.

See you later.

Paul