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No stranger to nationalization

Janet Wendy Spiegel — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:03:27 +0000

Globally, many countries are having to take stake in life-blood companies — in the US, banks like Bank of America, Citibank; in the auto industry, Chrysler and GM — and, well, you’ve read the news. The more money that gets infused into the failing businesses, the more nationalization will be taking place. As an ex-pat Canadian, with 36 Canadian years of living, nationalization doesn’t scare me. I grew up with social responsibility as part of my fabric and I never saw any reason to fear it. Moving to the US, I learned quickly that entrepreneurship is easier to embrace in the US because of the sheer numbers of citizens and their desire to consume. The meltdown that we are experiencing globally means that entrepreneurship will be that much more challenging. Financing harder to come by. Business development painfully slow.

But it still doesn’t scare me, yet. Having lived multiple corporate lifecycles, I’ve seen big business tighten and loosen the reins. In that cycle, a company will decentralize to be more nimble and give great latitude to field operations. As soon as profits start to shrink (which is inevitable), the company will again centralize, taking away operational privilege from field directors and managers. Purchasing will become centralized, expense accounts downsized and for a period of time, there can be intense scrutiny on all aspects of remote operations. And, then, when the burden of handling all operations and control internally at corporate headquarters, the cycle will begin again — more control and responsibility will head out to the field. Some unprofitable operations will be shut down, corporate headcount will be streamlined and it’ll be sink or swim for the field leaders.

If you are in a corporate structure for any period of time, you’ll see the same pattern repeated. Each time the pattern is re-shaped, with a new leader, new CEO, new director, there will be many fancy names attached to the activity: downsizing, right-sizing, change management, restructure, etc, etc. But if you take all the fancy, scary names away, really, you just have natural expansion and collapse. Companies with enough support survive the collapse. So right now, we are in an elevated state of collapse and the restructure is nationalization. It’s the business reaction to a disastrous economy.

Is there any silver lining to this current cloud? I don’t really think so. But I do believe that the innovators and inventors will find their way to invent and innovate new ways to rebuild economy. Israel created farms out of desert through creation of irrigation and solar systems, when there was no other way to fuel their own need for a level of self-sufficiency. We, the boomer generation, the “me” generation, the post-hippie Yuppie, found ways, as a whole, to create wealth…to the point of fabricated wealth for which we are all suffering greatly now.

Obama’s mantra of “Yes, we can” is not about the government “doing” for us. The government must and will shore up deficiencies by making more money to keep us afloat until the “we” in “yes, we can” actually get squeezed into invention. That invention will come from our demographic and the invention of the millenials, our echoes. Of that I have no doubt.

Blogging Boomers Carnival celebrates #100

Janet Wendy Spiegel — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:42:23 +0000

When the moon is in the 7th house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars…

It may not be THAT aligned, but I find it rather appealing that our Blogging Boomers Carnival celebrates our 100th carnival episode on a national holiday (MLK) and the day before the most historic presidential inauguration in the US. Does it mean anything??? At all?? I doubt it. But coincidence? I don’t think so…

It gives me great pleasure to direct your attention and your clicks to The Boomer Chronicles for this week’s 100th installment of Blogging Boomers Carnival, hosted at one of our carnival founder’s (Rhea Becker) sites!

When Wes Hein and Rhea Becker, both exceptional writers, asked me to join their Carnival a few years ago, I remembered thinking, “Huh?” I had no idea what a Blog Carnival was, what it was for and I seriously doubted we’d be at it more than a few weeks. I didn’t know either Wes or Rhea, but had “met” Rhea online through her blog and found her writing very appealing.

A Blog Carnival, for inquiring minds who want to know, is an online round up of blog posts by a specific group of bloggers (in our case Boomers) that makes the rounds by being hosted on a different blog each week (or day or month, depending upon the schedule your group decides upon.) When we started, there really were no social networks, except for My Space and a fledgling LinkedIn. So we kind of started our own. Each week, for the past 100 weeks, we stayed on track and on schedule (thanks to Wes and Rhea’s tenacity and good organizational skills!) and shared our views on all things Boomer. As a result, the Carnival has become quite well known among Boomer circles. We aren’t all the original members, but I am delighted to have been part of the first round.

There are some weeks, where, as a blogger, you sometimes feel a bit discouraged. Perhaps no one has emailed you anything exciting for a few days. Or the news is just really bad (like, oh, let’s say, our economy falling through the floor). Or people are afraid or too quick to move on to take the time to comment (yes, we LIVE for comments). But having our Carnival deadline is always the kick in the pants to inspire some sort of blogging frenzy on those rare occasions that blogger’s block kicks in.

Thank you for following our blogs. You have no idea what your support means to each of us. I hope we’ll continue for another 100 carnivals and I’ll do my best to keep you engaged (with my witty reparte, insightful commentary, ground-breaking analysis…LOL)!

Watch Obama’s inauguration live and online!

Janet Wendy Spiegel — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:23:25 +0000

Do you have to be at the office or on the road tomorrow? Don’t despair — if you have access to the internet, you can watch this historic inauguration live and online at CNN: http://www.cnn.com/live/ Plus CNN has partnered with Facebook, so if you sign up, you’ll be able to join millions of other by logging in and sharing your reactions and status for this historic moment.

This is really exciting.

Too much to say and not enough time…

Janet Wendy Spiegel — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:37:43 +0000

Apparently, along with many of you, I’ve got a heck of a lot on my mind lately. There are so many things I want to share — reviews of new movies coming up (a little bit of escapism never hurt anyone), much, much more on the auto industry, perspective on the economy, new technologies — but there will be NOTHING more exciting this coming week, than watching the inauguration of the Unites States of America’s first black president. On Tuesday, January 20, 2009 starting at 11:30 am, Barack Obama will take his place in history. I want to see Barack’s face the first moment he is called, “Mr. President”. I want to hear the words he will first say and cry my first emotional tears of relief that he will be in place to lead a hopeful charge for our futures.

Just as I remember exactly where I was on 9/11, the worst day in the history of the US, I will remember exactly where I am, on possibly, the best day in US history.