A MESSAGE FROM
FRANK L. VANDERSLOOT
“People need money and
financial security more than
ever and they know they
will not get it from their
employer!”
Navigating
the Perfect
Storm
As I write this, the economy
is in a mess. The stock
market has lost over 25
percent of its value. Banks
are failing left and right.
The U.S. Government just
passed a $700-billion (with a “B!”) bailout
package to try to prevent the nation from
crashing into a serious recession if not an
out-and-out depression. Corporations are
laying off people by the tens of thousands.
The housing market has crashed. A
huge percentage of homeowners are in
default. Those who are not in default have
watched their homes lose a substantial
percentage of their original value. The
Democrats are blaming the Republicans
and the Republicans are blaming the
Democrats. It’s hard to know who to
believe. Even the press has taken sides.
There seems to be a liberal press and a
conservative press but no accurate press.
Credit is tight. Businesses are in trouble.
Consumer confidence is at an all time low
causing everyone to ask themselves two
questions:
1) How did this all happen? and
2) Will we ever recover?
The first question is a lot easier to
answer than the second. It’s been said that
people are a lot like sheep. Even though
that’s an awful thing to say, it is more
true than most people would ever want
to admit. I know a little about sheep. We
had some sheep on our farm when I was
a young boy. It would often be my job to
tend them. A sheep has a deep need to
be with the other sheep. A single sheep
separated from the flock will be frightened
out of its mind. If you are herding sheep,
the hard part is to get the first one to go
where you want it to go. No sheep ever
wants to go first. But once you get the
first one to come the rest will quickly
follow. Each and every one! Because just
as badly as not wanting to be the first one
to do anything, no sheep ever wants to be
left behind.
I see a lot of similarities between some
people and sheep, especially in regard
to how they make financial decisions.
It’s those very similarities that got our
economy into so much trouble as a nation.
Remember the .com bubble when
everyone was investing in internet
companies? Remember when the world
finally realized that those companies were
all a sham? The weird thing is that for
years, even though everyone knew all of
the .coms were losing money (the analysts
knew it, the experts knew it, the stock
brokers knew it, the economists knew it,
even the investors knew it) people were
still investing like crazy. Why? Simply
because everyone else was doing it! And
they assumed that everyone else saw
