It has been some time since the movie Wall Street played in theaters. This film, by director Oliver Stone, tells the story of a young turk coming into his own in the heady halls of America's financial ivory towers.  The man above is Gordon Gekko, played by actor Michael Douglas.  Gordon has become well know for the line, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." 

Think critically about this statement for just a moment.  Truly consider it.  In my book Critical Success: The 2 Rules of 3, I speak of the barriers to critical success:

1) The Lack of Critical Thinking Skills
2) Media-Driven ConsumerCelebreality
3) The Willful Assumption of Debt
4) The Get Rich Quick Schemes

What Jeff Immelt said truly resonated with me, because an economy with a Gross Domestic Product that is propped up by at least 70 percent consumer spending is doomed to eventual collapse. If this is the economic reset, then in my mind it is welcomed.  And now that it is upon us, it is incumbent upon all of us to do whatever we can to lessen the atomic like blow this reset is visiting upon our society.  Never would I wish people to become jobless.  However, some sort of RESET is definitely in order. 

WE NEED AN ECONOMIC RESET!

Tie this need for a reset to the barriers to Critical Success.  In a culture that created Gordon Gekko as fiction, and Michael Milkin, Ivan Boesky, and most recently Bernie Madoff in reality, we need to immerse ourselves in the effort to smash through the first barrier, The Sincere Lack of Critical Thinking Skills. 

Understand, I work in Information Technology for a retailer.  I want/need people to buy STUFF!  However, it is the first barrier, where people don't think and act on impulse, prodded into action by the second barrier, MDC, their sincere desire to feel rich and look like Paris Hilton, which encourages them to take on unmanageable amounts of debt, the third barrier, which leads us all to ruin.  My company can't count on a customer that spends beyond their means, and can't be a continuous customer.  We need people to buy today, tomorrow, next month, next year, ten years down the road.  I can't count on a customer that is carrying around $80,000 worth of credit card debt.  This person is simply a card in a house of cards, threatening to bring gown the whole system, and with it, my company.  We need a RESET.

I need a customer that can walk through a mall and spend only what they can afford.  I need a customer that will help my organization subsist, and help us retrain ourselves for a much more money savvy culture.  We will then retool our manufacturing and logistical infrastructure to support the creation, marketing, and selling of product at a much more reasonable rate.  An all consuming materialist culture cannot long survive.

We need to admonish our citizens to become critical thinkers.  We need to question our actions.  We need to avoid the greed trap.  When we here the echo of Gordon Gekko, our critical thinking minds should smile, and regard it as what it is, great entertainment, and refute it as a reflection of reality.  It should become nothing more than a mirror of the past, when we as a nation worshiped at the alter of greed, and we accepted the rationale that our self worth was directly determined by the amount of stuff we owned, and most certainly could put on display for our friends and family. 

I believe we will come through this sooner rather than later.  We never get the timing right in the aggregate.  Our economy will have recovered by the time people start talking about the recovery.  I admonish you all now to position yourselves accordingly.  Be prepared for change.  However, positioning yourself for an economic recovery doesn't mean buying stocks and real estate at an ignorant, break-neck pace.  It doesn't mean you go into investing without thinking.  It doesn't mean you stop asking questions.  In fact, it means you start asking aggressively.  It means you become a critical thinker, and do not throw your hard-earned money away needlessly.  It means you do not become barred from critical success by the fourth barrier.  As I've said on YouTube, Get Rich Quick Schemes strike the rich, the poor, and those of us in the middle.  Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, a fund manager that had been scammed by Madoff, committed suicide.  He had lost 1 Billion dollars of his client's money investing in Madoff's ponzi scheme.  Did greed guide him?  Did he ask critical questions before investing with Madoff?  Did he know that for the past ten years inquiries had been made into Madoff's activities?  We may never know. 

Sometimes, even when you're at your best, someone will get the best of you, and you may very well fail in your attempt at success.  However, never let it be because you didn't STOP & THINK.  And know that it most certainly applies to the Madoff ponzi scheme ... if it looks to good to be true, and something is stirring in your gut, asking you to think twice?  Then, please do so.  It's most likely your inner-voice trying its best to scream loud enough to drown out the thrumming sing-song of your ruinous by nevertheless humanistic greed.  Fight it back.  STOP & THINK!  More importantly, think CRITICALLY!