Column by Tim Riley

The Dow Jones sits at about 6,600. A 10-year low. From all available data, this does not appear to be a short blip on the path to riches either. Experienced, hard working people are losing their jobs and most college seniors should be looking for a good graduate school. Of course, it’s not all bad.

If you have managed your large corporation into the ground, then the last six months have been a bonanza of good fortune. Need a few billion dollars to make up for the mistakes you’ve made while collecting an enormous salary? Just ask Uncle Sam — he’s in a giving mood. All he asks is that you avoid any of those fun Las Vegas conferences for awhile.

Luckily, though, there is a silver lining to what is undoubtedly a terrible situation. When things are going well, it is difficult to see problems festering beneath a system; however, when one’s portfolio loses half of its value, the reasons why begin to become a little clearer.

It would obviously be nice if the Bernie Madoffs of the world would stop stealing millions of dollars from people. Or if Annette Yeomans of California wouldn’t steal $9.9 million as CFO of her company to buy, among other things, $240,000 in shoes. But when one has 300 million people running around a country, it’s only logical that there will be some terrible people.

Unfortunately, the line-up of real groups behind the current economic crisis looks like the usual suspects. There is always public enemy number one, the government, to worry about fixing first. To list the follies of the federal government would take quite literally forever, since they make them faster than they can be shouted. There are, though, a few glaringly obvious issues that have to be confronted.

Since the government is king, it does not have to worry about things regular entities do. General necessities such as a balanced budget are not required when you are the one who prints the money. Need a few billion dollars to prop up those nice subprime lenders? Just do it. The long term consequences will be someone else’s problem.

It’s tough to blame them for those problems though. They have much bigger problems to worry about. The members of the House have the pressing need to propose some legislation that will look good in campaign commercials for their next election. There is really no point in trying too hard though, the odds are with them coming back if they so desire. Despite everyone hating Congress in general, everyone sure loves their local member of Congress.

Sadly, it’s far too simple to throw all the current problems at the feet of our wonderful government. There is plenty of blame to still go around. There are the large corporations that helped create the massive problems in the first place. One can rail on executive salaries and such, but that would be ignoring the far larger issue.

Like almost every economic recession, when one looks at the companies that were hit the hardest, it is those who adopted policies and practices designed only for short-term benefit. If a small downturn results in your company needing billions of dollars from an outside source to continue existing, your company’s model was inherently flawed. Now, because of a lack of long-term strategic planning, things have become worse and worse because of the collateral damage from the initial problems.

Unfortunately, there is yet another key contributor to the problems that has yet to be exposed. This group is much larger than the others, though, since it includes most everyone in the country. Everyone who idly stood by and watched things progress to this point while taking advantage of the poor policies stands to accept blame for the massive downturn. Or, you know, those who sit around typing out about 700 words of sarcastic complaining and then do nothing to effect any actual change.

Luckily, when the blame game results in everyone being called out, it is probably time to stop worrying about it. Instead, all that energy put toward figuring out who caused the problem, could be much better used fixing what’s wrong. If history is any indication, things will probably be turned around by unsustainable practices, but damned if that doesn’t beat crying into one’s bank statement every month.