Watching Frontline the other night on PBS helped me understand that given the problems in our economy, what we’re trying to do now is recover from too much “sit down and shut up!” The Frontline program was about the story of the head of a small federal agency who, back in the 90′s, saw serious problems with the growth of an unregulated derivatives market and called attention to it with the then-head of the US Treasury, Robert Rubin, and the then-head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. Their response, was, “Things are great. Sit down and shutup.” Even when one of the largest hedge funds was on the brink of collapse because what she had predicted started to happen (the big boys got the big banks to ante up and “bailout” the hedge fund), they said, “it’s just an anomaly. Sit down and shutup.” She even testified to Congress, and they said, “sit down and shut up.” What’s worse, she wasn’t the only one to testify about such things to Congress. They always said, ”sit down and shut up.” The pattern seems to be if a person or persons are running the show, and they don’t want interference with the way they run it from their governing board, they suggest that they understand what’s going on, and can be trusted to take care of business, so “sit down and shut up.” Boards are starting to take notice that this is not a good idea. Sometimes well designed questions can be just what is needed to avoid future problems. Think Enron, Worldcom, AIG and most of what we’re dealing with in our economy today. But it’s still a problem. Alan Greenspan eventually admitted that he was wrong about his argument that markets don’t need regulation. Yet now, a year out from almost melting down the world economy, we are still arguing with the financial world about the need for regulation. You think maybe they aren’t objective about their position? You think that maybe even after receiving the benefits of our bailout money (survival, bonuses) that they still want to be able to do what they’ve always done? Do you think they’ve channeled lots of that TARP money to the largest lobbying effort in Washington? Watch the program, “The Warning” HERE , and then see what you think.
Now is not the time to “sit down and shut up!”
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One of the cool things about history is that it gives us some perspective. This week, NASA launched a new experimental rocket to test the design. It was 327 feet tall. The tallest rocket ever launched was over 360 feet tall. That’s big, right? The launch reminded me of an article in one of the old Popular Science Magazines from 1935 that I have. I like to look through these old magazines and see what they thought were amazing developments of the times and see if there are parallels today. This particular article was about Dr. Robert Goddard, called the father of rocketry, preparing to launch a “giant” rocket into the stratosphere. Check out the article below. 
How many people would it take to pick up the Ares rocket launched this week?
