Wall Street: Applying Lessons Learned in Yellowstone Park?

I’ve been keep­ing a closer eye on the Amer­i­can eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion today after tak­ing a break yesterday.

On the evening news I lis­tened to the station’s talk­ing heads dis­cuss a local wild fire.  Right on the heels of that story, the bailout plan in Con­gress was covered.

As will hap­pen, the two sub­jects blended in my head and sud­denly I won­dered, is our cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis a sit­u­a­tion in which we need to take a les­son from the 1988 for­est fires in Yel­low­stone National Park?  I can remem­ber clearly how heated the debate became over the con­tro­ver­sial “nat­ural burn” pol­icy.  Pub­lic out­cry reached a fever pitch.  Politi­cians, nat­u­rally, jumped on the band wagon — every­one scream­ing for the heads of those in favor of “nat­ural burn” and demand­ing imme­di­ate action to put out the fire.

What the pub­lic didn’t under­stand, and what envi­ron­men­tal­ists tried to explain, was how impor­tant the burn was.  That, as dev­as­tat­ing as it was, the park would be bet­ter off in the long run.

Should we be fol­low­ing the same lines of logic regard­ing our cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis?  Should we just allow the sit­u­a­tion to fol­low it’s nat­ural course and let the chips fall where they may?  Should we let the mar­ket cor­rect itself no mat­ter what the consequences?

The prob­lem is we’re talk­ing about peo­ple, not trees.  And we’re talk­ing about inter­na­tional con­se­quences, not a local­ized situation.

I’m not an econ­o­mist; just a Sub­ur­ban Wife.  I don’t have the answers.  And I don’t think that many of my fel­low cit­i­zens have any more of an informed opin­ion than I do.  The pub­lic out­cry against the bailout both­ers me because at this point in the elec­tion cycle I believe that politi­cians are much more con­cerned about cov­er­ing their asses and pan­der­ing to their con­stituents’ wishes than doing what’s right for our country.

No related posts.